The Obama and McCain campaigns jointly negotiated a detailed secret contract dictating the terms of all the 2008 debates. This includes who gets to participate, as well as the topics raised during the debates. We speak to Open Debates founder and executive director George Farah.
on tonights debate each candidate only has ninety seconds to respond to a particular question and then, only two minutes afterwards to have any sort of discussion! how deep can you get into any of the issues in that sort of time?!
they also get into the financial crisis and how limited the debate is between democrats and republicans;
Quote:
AMY GOODMAN: I want to look how the two major party presidential nominees talk about the financial crisis and the Treasury’s $700 billion bailout and how the third party candidates address the issue. Let’s begin with an excerpt from the first presidential debate last Friday between Senator McCain and Senator Obama.
SEN. BARACK OBAMA: Number one, we’ve got to make sure that we’ve got oversight over this whole process. $700 billion potentially is a lot of money. Number two, we’ve got to make sure that taxpayers, when they are putting their money at risk, have the possibility of getting that money back and gains if the market and when the market returns.
SEN. JOHN McCAIN: We have finally seen Republicans and Democrats sitting down and negotiating together and coming up with a package. This package has transparency in it, options for loans to failing businesses, rather than the government taking over those loans. We have to—it has to have a package with a number of other essential elements to it.
AMY GOODMAN: So, the two major presidential party candidates agree on the bailout. Now, let’s listen to some of the other presidential candidates who were not included in Friday’s debate, what they had to say about the bailout. This is Libertarian presidential nominee Bob Barr.
BOB BARR: Now we have the federal government, the Bush administration, coming to us, the taxpayers of this country, and saying, “We want you to bail us out of the problem that we’ve created over the last ten years.” You open the door to this, you throw open wide the barn doors here, this raid on the federal Treasury, this raid on the taxpayers of this country, you’ll know for a fact that it will happen again and again and again. Already, others are lining up. The automobile industry is already lining up for its bailout. The Republican and the Democratic parties are complicit not only in causing this problem through their bad policies, their bad legislation, but also in proposing this bogus solution to the problem.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Bob Barr, Libertarian candidate for president. We also interviewed Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader last week. This is some of what he had to say.
RALPH NADER: It’s not clear at all why a bailout is needed. That’s part of the stampede in the pack and the panic that Bush and Paulson and Bernanke are pushing Congress toward. You know, it’s eerily reminiscent, when you listen to Bush yesterday, of how he stampeded the Congress and the country into the criminal war invasion of Iraq in 2003. I mean, look at all his statements: this could do this, this would do that, farms failing, small business, tada, tada. The first question we have to ask as citizens is, why is there a need for a bailout?
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Ralph Nader. And finally, this is Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney talking about the bailout.
CYNTHIA McKINNEY: First of all, we need a moratorium on foreclosures. Secondly, we need to renegotiate all adjustable-rate mortgages into thirty- or forty-year loans. We also need to make sure that we redefine credit so that credit can work for small business owners and individuals and not against them. We also need accountability in the system—openness, transparency and accountability.
AMY GOODMAN: George Farah, it sounds like it would be a very different debate about the most important issues of the day, if these third party candidates were included.
GEORGE FARAH: Absolutely, Amy. Thank you so much for highlighting the significance of third party inclusion. There is no doubt that often the Republican and Democratic parties take positions, in large part due to the corporate interests that finance their campaigns, that are directly at odds with the opinions of either the majority of Americans or tens of millions of Americans. And these debates, which are designed to inform voters so they can make substantive decisions, should be airing the ideas that are supported by the vast majority of Americans that the two major parties are excluding.
you can read the whole transcript, watch the video or listen to the audio - it starts at 31:13 in
Everyone seems to think it's going to be great fun but I'm not so optimistic.
I watched Bush get owned repeatedly by Kerry in the 2004 debates and it didn't seem to make much difference to the voters over there...
Yes, but that was the presidential debates. In all honesty, I can tell you the voters won't be making decisions based on the VP debates. People over here are a lot more interested Skeletor and B.
I dunno there are plenty of stupid people over here too, maybe the difference is our stupid people don't vote so much.
My two problems with the US electorate are those that vote based on their illogical incongrous religious superstitions about homosexuality or abortions when the president has almost no power in these areas and secondly this inverse snobery shit.
Talking to a lot of Americans a lot seem to have a problem voting for what they see as candidates who are 'their betters' or who are elitest because they have a better education. It can't be a class thing because Bush was patently US upper class but they need someone to be less intelligent or at least their equal.
This is completely crazy. I wonder how they choose their doctors...
I dunno there are plenty of stupid people over here too, maybe the difference is our stupid people don't vote so much.
My two problems with the US electorate are those that vote based on their illogical incongrous religious superstitions about homosexuality or abortions when the president has almost no power in these areas and secondly this inverse snobery shit.
Talking to a lot of Americans a lot seem to have a problem voting for what they see as candidates who are 'their betters' or who are elitest because they have a better education. It can't be a class thing because Bush was patently US upper class but they need someone to be less intelligent or at least their equal.
This is completely crazy. I wonder how they choose their doctors...
A lot of people believed the persona built around Bush that he was just a "good old Texas boy" Born in Midland, TX, raised down home, blah, blah, blah. Believe me, I lived an hour and a half away from Midland, I lived in the part of NM known as little Texas which is in the heart of West Texas. None of them or many Americans thought he was Upper class.
My problem with the electoral system is it's just outdated and it is what makes many people think that their vote doesn't count.
And believe me, I talk to a lot of Americans as well, being one
Also I do wonder if some of then know that if they vote for Palin that doesn't actually mean that they get to have sexual intercourse with her.
This is a difficult fact to get across you only need to look at the similar situation with people who buy Britney Spears albums...
In all honesty I have not heard one man over here say the want to have sex with her or even woman. It's not even much of an issue with the comedians.
Just this week I was out for drinks with friends, most of them males ages 25-34 and they all talked about her and not one mentioned her look. They all just discussed the issues of what is wrong with her brain not what is right with her looks, even in jest.
Hell, I was at Oktoberfest with hundreds of drunk males and not one who was discussing her said a thing about her looks. That's a pretty mote issue over here now.
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum You cannot attach files in this forum You cannot download files in this forum
i can see the moon, so palin would say i could work as an expert for nasa 
