Calvin: Do you believe in the devil? You know, a supreme evil being dedicated to the temptation, corruption, and destruction of man?
Hobbes: I'm not sure man needs the help."
--Calvin & Hobbes by Bill Watterson.

The Scene Of The Crime: October 8TH, 2004 The Presidential Debates, St. Louis, Missouri, USA. As we close in on the final �kabuki� debate between only two of the many candidates for President of the United States of America, I just shake my head in disgust. These debates are nothing more than a campaign commercial and newsbites for the media to use their propaganda to control the ignorant American public mind. Before anything else everyone should listen to �Top 10 Secrets They Don't Want You to Know About the Debates� by Connie Rice and Tavis Smiley. I also highly recommend reading Deterring Democracy: How the Commission on Presidential Debates Undermines Democracy.

Yes, the media is corrupt and it is extremely biased. Not towards liberals or conservatives in one way or another, but to any one else. Yes the media keeps the status quo of the two parties in line. The proof is in the pudding as the saying goes, and the proof is the arrests of Presidential Candidates David Cobb (Green) and Michael Badnarik (Libertarian). Here is what happened: A complaint was filed against Arizona State University and The Commission on Presidential Debates to stop the final Bush � Kerry debate. While a few cameras were present, this clearly did not receive the amount of national media attention it deserved. The main stream media knew, in advance, and refused to cover the story. Friday, they attempted to serve an Order to Show Cause to the Commission on Presidential Debates at their D.C. headquarters. The CPD did everything within their power to avoid process service. Again, America�s major media outlets did not carry the story.
Later that evening, Michael Badnarik & David Cobb personally attempted NONVIOLENTLY to serve the papers to the CPD during the 'staged' Bush � Kerry debate in St. Louis � AND BOTH WERE ARRESTED IN THE PROCESS.

The mainstream press did know of this, but REFUSED to cover it. I wonder why?

In a free society, the police protect citizens, but in a police state, they protect government from its citizens.
There were protests as see up above but those were not covered either.

This another story by Mad Studios:
"This is from Inside, the two major party candidates were having their pre-scripted, teleprompter-aided, taxpayer-funded hour long press conference. Outside, Michael Badnarik, the nominee of America's third largest political party, the Libertarians, was being arrested while trying to enter the debates and serve legal papers. With him was David Cobb, from the Green party, another Presidential candidate getting arrested to protest his exclusion from the debates. Two government candidates inside on the national stage, in the time-honored tradition of the Presidential Debates, and their two largest challengers, independents, outside being handcuffed and put into a paddywagon. Really makes you think, doesn't it?
Imagine the Orwellian sense of confusion those police officers must have felt. Here they were, in America, called out to don riot gear and protect the Presidential Debates and while the debate is going on inside, you find yourself arresting two Presidential Candidates and riding them around in a paddywagon for a few hours. Do these officers feel like good Americans? Do any of the officers that were witness to this historical event have the courage to step forward and speak up about it?
What if some other country were having an election, and citizens were only allowed to hear from two government-approved candidates? What if their opposition, candidates on the ballot in a majority of states, were arrested on the orders from the leader in power, during the Presidential Debates, would this be news?
The USA Today, Atlanta Journal, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury News, New York Daily News, Seattle Times, Indianapolis Star, Boston Globe, Seattle Post Intelligencer, Miami Herald, San Francisco Chronicle, San Diego Union Tribune, Kansas City Star and a long list of other so-called newspapers decided for whatever reason to spike the story.
The media blackout this entire campaign for Michael Badnarik is easily explained. The Libertarians do not have alot of money for ads and the Republicans and the Democrats do. There has obviously been an unspoken rule put into play across the board to not include Badnarik in any polls or to even mention his name. This circular logic keeps anyone, even someone from a political party that has been on the ballot in all 50 states since 1992, from ever reaching the magic 15% mark required for inclusion in the debates. And without being in the debates, it is virtually impossible to win an election. Or at least that is what Bush and Kerry are banking on.
There have been documented instances where people have gone on Fox News and CNN and been told that they would not be allowed to say Badnarik's name. This country is 20 days away from a presidential election and there has been no national exposure of the 3rd party alternatives available to the voters.
Since Bush came to power there has been a steady attack on Freedom and Rights in America. The Patriot Act, secret courts, endorsed torture, endorsed torture via foreign cooperation, people locked up for holding a sign or having a bumper sticker not in favor of our current President, all in the name of the war on terror, justified by the 9-11 tragedy, the details of which President Bush has been working hard to make sure you don't find out about. With Patriot Act 2, the draft, and compulsary community service looming on the horizon, a future with Bush or Kerry in power does not look well for the Freedom minded American that made this country great, and we are not sitting idly by.
It is incumbent on all of us Americans to insist that U.S. citizens have a meaningful opportunity to meet with lawyers and present their side of the story -- and to insist that courts know what they're talking about before consigning people to their fates. It is also incumbant upon us to inform ourselves, since the Press is AWOL, about ALL of the choices available for the Presidency on November 2ND.
Extraordinary measures will need to be taken by Team Badnarik. Word of mouth, home printers, and the disassociated internet groups are all that is available at this late hour. Will it be enough? I have faith in the American people, and if they can be woken up to the what the media has been doing, we have a real chance to change things for the better come November 2ND. The internet is famous for routing around censorship, and I firmly believe that the 'Net will play a deciding role in this highly charged election.~

This shows us all how corrupt our newsmedia is, that they deliberately would conceal the arrest of the third largest political, the Libertarian Party Presidential nominee�s arrest. Badnarik along with the arrest of Green Party Presidential nominee David Cobb were released about midnight, well after all the commentary was finished and the day over. Speaking on behalf of Cobb, Kaitlin Sopoci-Belknap said "It's ridiculous and preposterous that we're only allowed to hear two perspectives. Especially when they're scripted ahead of time and financed by a private corporation".

Here is a one story that was able to be put out:

Libertarians get their Day in Court
~"Real debate or no debate," says Arizona party
Phoenix, AZ (PRWEB) October 12, 2004 -- The case has been filed, the orders have been served, and the hearing has been scheduled. On Tuesday, the Superior Court of Maricopa County will decide whether or not taxpayer money can be used to present campaign commercials for favored political parties and their candidates.

At issue is the exclusion of Michael Badnarik, the Libertarian Party's presidential candidate, from a Wednesday event at Arizona State University in Tempe.

"The media refers to this event as a �debate,�" says Stephen Gordon, Badnarik's communications director. "But there are three candidates on the ballot in Arizona, and the University, in collusion with an allegedly non-partisan, allegedly non-profit organization, is spending about $2 million to publicize the views of only two of them."

Arizona Libertarians filed suit to stop the event on October 1, claiming that the state Constitution prohibits donations of taxpayer money to corporations like the Commission on Presidential debates. "If all of the candidates were invited, it might be portrayed as an educational program," says David Euchner, the Tucson attorney pressing the Libertarians' case. "When legitimate candidates whose names will appear on the Arizona ballot are excluded, the only word for it is 'campaign commercial.'"

Early Friday, Judge Pendleton Gaines issued an Order to Show Cause, which Euchner caused to be served on the defendants, Arizona State University and the Commission on Presidential Debates. CPD personnel attempted to evade and resist service -- Michael Badnarik himself was arrested in St. Louis while attempting to serve the papers -- but copies were left at their headquarters and affidavits supporting the attempt at service have been filed. A hearing has been scheduled for 9 a.m. on Tuesday in the Superior Court of Maricopa County.

Case Number CV2004-019089 is scheduled to be heard at 9:00AM, October 12, 2004 in Room 814 of the East Court Building of the Maricopa County (Arizona) Superior Court. The hearing is scheduled to be no longer than one hour, with one half hour allotted for each side to make their arguments.

Badnarik, along with George W. Bush and John F. Kerry, will be on Arizonans' ballots on November 2nd as a presidential choice. His name also appears on the ballot in 47 other states and the District of Columbia.~

Here is an article, one of the few out there:

BY JOSH GERSTEIN - Staff Reporter of the Sun
October 11, 2004
~The third and final debate between President Bush and Senator Kerry has been thrown into doubt after a state judge in Arizona ordered a hearing on whether the event, scheduled for Wednesday, should be halted because the Libertarian Party's nominee for president has not been invited.
Judge F. Pendleton Gaines III instructed the debate's hosts, Arizona State University and the Commission on Presidential Debates, to appear in his courtroom in Phoenix tomorrow to respond to a lawsuit filed last week by the Libertarians.
"I'm happy so far with the way things are going," an attorney for the Libertarian Party, David Euchner, said in an interview yesterday. "He did not have to sign that order. The fact that he did is a good sign."
The suit argues that the university is illegally donating state resources to the Republican and Democratic Parties by serving as host for a debate that showcases Messrs. Bush and Kerry but excludes their Libertarian counterpart, Michael Badnarik, who is on the ballot in Arizona and 47 other states.
"They can't have debates that make public expenditures for private benefit," Mr. Euchner said. "A.S.U. is spending its money in violation of the state constitution."
A spokeswoman for the university, Nancy Neff, said she was unaware of the hearing tomorrow. "If that's the judge's order, then we'll be there for sure," Ms. Neff said.
While the university is constructing a massive press filing center and has incurred large expenses for security, Ms. Neff insisted the debate will take place at no cost to taxpayers.
"We are not spending public money on the debate. We have underwritten it using private donations, in-kind gifts, and private foundation funds," the university spokeswoman said. "The price we've been working with is $2.5 million, and that's what we've been trying to raise," Ms. Neff said.
Major sponsors for the third debate include a heavy equipment maker, Caterpillar Inc.; a local utility company, APS, and an Indian tribal group that owns two casinos near Scottsdale, the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community.
Ms. Neff acknowledged, however, that the university has yet to raise all the funds required for the event, which is scheduled to take place at an auditorium on the school's Tempe campus, just east of Phoenix. "We're still raising money even as we work on it," she said, adding that at the last tally about $2.3 million had been pledged.
Mr. Euchner said the university's claim that no public money is involved is laughable. "The fact they've got their hat in hand helps us," he said. "The evidence is pretty clear that if there's a shortfall here that A.S.U. is holding the bag. They made, essentially, an interest free loan."
Mr. Euchner said the state's involvement in the debate is part of what many Libertarians see as a pattern of improper use of government funds to promote the two major parties. "Taxpayers foot the bill for the Democratic and Republican national conventions," he complained. "Anything they can get the taxpayers to pay for that way, they do it."
Several legal experts said the Libertarians face an uphill battle in attempting to use the so-called gift clause of the Arizona Constitution to block Wednesday's debate.
"It doesn't strike me as a very strong ground," an author of a book on the Arizona Constitution, Toni McClory, said. "It's not a violation of the gift clause if the state is getting something of real value." While state universities have been hosts to presidential debates in the past, Arizona State is the only one to do so this year.
Ms. McClory, who teaches at a community college near Phoenix, said the publicity surrounding the debate might be considered a substantial benefit to the university. "It's giving the university a great deal of public exposure," she said.
A law professor at the University of Arizona, Robert Glennon, said the court dispute is likely to turn on whether Arizona State is seen as discriminating against the Libertarians. He said offering the Libertarians the use of a similar facility on campus would probably be enough to fulfill the state's obligations.
"So long as the state has a nondiscriminatory policy, the fact that one particular party or one religion uses it is of no consequence," Mr. Glennon said. The professor noted that the requirements to bring a case for abuse of taxpayer funds are often lower in state courts than in the federal system, but he said he was surprised that the judge granted the Libertarians a hearing.
Judge Gaines was appointed to the bench in 1999 by Gov. Jane Hull, a Republican. In his show-cause order issued Friday morning, the judge also required that the university and the debate commission be served with the lawsuit by Friday afternoon. An attorney for the university accepted service, but security guards at the commission's headquarters in Washington ordered process-servers to leave the building, Mr. Euchner said.
Indeed, Mr. Badnarik and the Green Party nominee, David Cobb, were arrested Friday night after they crossed a police line at the presidential debate in St. Louis. Mr. Badnarik said he was trying to serve the lawsuit on a representative of the debate commission. The two candidates were released after being given tickets for trespassing and refusing a reasonable order from a policeman.
The commission, which is a nonprofit corporation, has insisted that it applies nonpartisan criteria to determine who is invited to the debates. The rules require that candidates have at least 15% support in national polls to qualify. None of the third-party candidates this year has met that hurdle.
Critics of the debate commission assert that it is little more than a front for the major parties. They note that the Democrats and the GOP issued a joint press release announcing the creation of the "bipartisan" commission and describing its purpose as facilitating debates between their "respective nominees." More recently, the commission has described itself as "nonpartisan," although its adherence to that standard remains in question.
Last month, a spokesman for the debate commission told the Sun that the panel could not comply with a provision in the agreement worked out between the Bush and Kerry campaigns that dictated the makeup of the audience for Friday's town meeting debate be one-half "soft" supporters of Mr. Bush and one-half "soft" supporters of Mr. Kerry. "We can't use soft Bush and soft Kerry supporters because we are a nonpartisan group, not a bipartisan group," said the commission spokesman, who asked not to be named. "We have said we'd use undecided voters."
In an interview with CNN last week, the editor in chief of Gallup, Frank Newport, said that more than 90% of those in the audience for Friday's debate had stated a "soft" preference for either Mr. Bush or Mr. Kerry. Mr. Newport did not indicate whether supporters of the independent candidate Ralph Nader or of Mr. Badnarik were considered for the audience.
In August, a federal judge in Washington sharply criticized the Federal Election Commission for ignoring evidence of bias on the part of the debate commission. Judge Henry Kennedy Jr. noted that in 2000 the debate commission gave security guards "facebooks" with pictures of third-party candidates and instructed the guards to prevent those in the photos from entering the debate venues, even with valid audience tickets. "The exclusion policy appears partisan on its face," Judge Kennedy wrote.
In a national poll taken in September, 57% of likely voters favored including presidential candidates other than the president and the Massachusetts senator in the debates. The survey, conducted by Zogby International, found 57% of likely voters in favor of adding Mr. Nader, and 44% in favor of including Mr. Badnarik.~

Here is one more article from the that discloses the judgement against the Libertarians:

ARIZONA JUDGE RULES AGAINST LIBERTARIAN PARTY IN COMISSION ON PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES LAWSUIT

~An Arizona Superior Court judge refused Tuesday to allow Libertarian presidential candidate Michael Badnarik into the third Bush-Kerry presidential debate -- and he rejected arguments that the debate to be held tonight at Arizona State University is being illegally financed with public funds.
David Euchner, the attorney representing the Libertarian Party of Arizona, argued that the university is violating the state constitution by giving public funds to only two of the three presidential candidates on the ballot -- President George W. Bush and Sen. John Kerry -- while excluding the third, Badnarik.
Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Pendleton Gaines said the Libertarian Party waited too long to file suit. The suit naming the university and the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) was filed on Oct. 1.
But filing earlier would have been impossible, said Stephen Gordon, communications director for the Badnarik campaign.
"The Washington Post reported that Bush did not even agree to debate until Sept. 20," Gordon said. "The CPD did not announce who would be excluded until Oct. 6. We did this in the most timely manner possible.
"Additionally, we filed in enough time that this hearing could have occurred earlier than the day before the debate."
In the suit, the party sought one of two possible resolutions: Either the debate could be called off unless Badnarik was included, or the 17,000 registered Libertarian voters in Arizona could be reimbursed -- since tax money was being used to fund a debate from which their candidate had been excluded.
"There are three recognized parties in Arizona, the Democrats, the Republicans and the Libertarians, and they all have the same status," Gordon said in an American Politics Today interview Tuesday night.
"There are three candidates for president on the ballot, the Democrat, the Republican and the Libertarian. But only the Libertarian, Michael Badnarik, is being excluded from the debate."
The Libertarians have been unable to find out exactly how much public money is being spent on the debate, but representatives of the university admitted that they have not received enough private donations to recoup the estimated $2.5 million spent to host the event.
Also, the Tempe City Council contributed $20,000 to help defray the costs of the debate, and that money is certainly public funds, Gordon said.
As of Tuesday night, the judge's written ruling was unavailable. However, his decision did leave the party free "to seek compensation for damages" in a civil suit, Gordon noted.
No decision has been reached as to when such a suit would be filed, or exactly who the defendants would be.
"We are considering all of our options and it is safe to assume that you may expect more actions from us over the next few days," Gordon said.~

So now when we watch the debates tomorrow we all should know exactly what is going on. If anyone wants to still go over these so-called debates go to the bullshit The Commission on Presidential Debates
and read the 2004 debate transcripts. Where is Mr.Crusader Ralph Nader during all this? What a joke he is�

Here is one more thing and I will follow it with a several quotes to close this entry out with. This comes from the Bill Moyers Now PBS Program. This is a transcript of a segment called �Rigging the Debates�. If anyone wants to watch it please click here. Also the contract drafted by the Republican and Democratic campaigns � the 2004 Memorandum of Understanding � has been made public.

�RIGGING THE DEBATES�

NOW WITH BILL MOYERS exposes the truth behind the Presidential debates, detailing how they've been hijacked by the two main political parties. Before you watch the debates this week, be prepared�watch this excerpt from NOW, the show the press had called, "one of the last bastions of serious journalism on TV." If you care about your democracy, you'll be blown away.

ANNOUNCER: From our studios in New York, David Brancaccio and Bill Moyers.
BRANCACCIO: Welcome to NOW. There are an awful lot of voters out there who say they're going to wait to make up their mind until after the candidates debate.
They'll get their chance Thursday night. President Bush and Senator Kerry will meet at the University of Miami for their first debate. The thing is, even the form of these debates is debatable.
MOYERS: Which brings me, David, to a book I read years ago that changed the way I see the world. The title is THE IMAGE and in it the historian Daniel Boorstin argued that so much is being staged and scripted in American life that we are losing touch with reality. He described it as the triumph of pseudo-events � counterfeit happenings, fabrications, replacing what's real with illusions of truth.
I think of Daniel Boorstin every four years on the eve of the presidential debates. These debates have become exactly what he found so deeply troubling � the packaging of politicians and politics to create a phony transcendence that simulates democracy while subverting it.
Here's our report, produced by our colleague Peter Meryash.
MOYERS: They've been dubbed the Super Bowl of politics. At no other time during a campaign do so many millions of Americans focus on the choice before them. Debates can make or break a candidate.
John Kennedy said he wouldn't have won the presidency in 1960 if he had not debated Richard Nixon.
Jimmy Carter said he won in 1976 because of his debates with Gerald Ford and then, Carter says, he lost in 1980 because of his debate with Ronald Reagan.
When Carter squared off with Reagan, sixty percent of American TV households were watching. But over the past quarter century, there's been a big change. During Gore versus Bush four years ago, less than thirty percent of TV households tuned in.
George Farah thinks he knows what's happening.
FARAH: When you have stultified debates that produce scripted sound bites rather than authentic discussion, the American people are gonna turn off their television sets.
MOYERS: Farah founded a nonpartisan organization called Open Debates. He says Americans are not getting the presidential debates we deserve.
FARAH: The American people want to hear and see popular candidates discuss the important issues in an unscripted manner. That's what's at stake. Whether or not we're gonna have the right to witness an important conversation.
MOYERS: And why aren't we getting that kind of discussion between the candidates now?
FARAH: Because the Commission on Presidential Debates secretly submits to the Republican and the Democratic candidates and allows these candidates to sanitize the debate format, excludes popular voices, avoid discussing critical issues.
MOYERS: Farah has written a book laying out his case. It's been endorsed across the political spectrum from the conservative patriarch Paul Weyrich of the Heritage Foundation to the Texas populist Jim Hightower.
What unites them in outrage is the Commission on Presidential Debates, the official sounding, supposedly nonpartisan sponsor.
Don't be fooled, says Farah.
FARAH: The Commission on Presidential Debates, although it claims to be a nonpartisan organization, was created by the Republican and Democratic parties for the Republican and Democratic parties. By design, it was established to submit and conceal the wishes and demands of the Democratic/Republican nominees.
MOYERS: The result, he says, is an event tightly controlled by the candidates, a glorified press conference with rules rigged to serve the candidates, not the public.
Listen to moderator Jim Lehrer as he opened the 2000 debate between George W. Bush and Al Gore:
LEHRER [10/3/00]: Tonight, we'll have the candidates at podiums. No answer to a question can exceed two minutes. The candidates under their rules may not question each other directly.
MOYERS: Those were the rules the candidates demanded. For a reason.
MOYERS: You say that what makes these debates so valuable to voters � confrontation, spontaneity, audience size � terrifies the candidates. Why?
FARAH: Because if the candidates were forced to be confrontational, if the candidates were forced to engage in spontaneous discourse, if the candidates were forced to confront issues they were uncomfortable with, they might make a mistake.
MOYERS: That's just what happened to the first President Bush back in 1992, during the town hall debate with challengers Ross Perot and Bill Clinton.
AUDIENCE QUESTION: How has the national debt personally affected each of your lives? And if it hasn't, how can you honestly find a cure for the economic problems of the common people if you have no experience in what's ailing them?
BUSH: I think the national debt affects everybody.
AUDIENCE QUESTION: You personally.
BUSH: Obviously it has a lot to do with interest rates.
SIMPSON: She's saying, "you personally."
AUDIENCE QUESTION: You, on a personal basis, how has it affected you?
SIMPSON: Has it affected you personally?
FARAH: The President was very flustered with the question. He didn't know how to handle it. What do you mean affect me?
AUDIENCE QUESTION: What I'm saying is�
BUSH: I'm not sure I get... Help me with the question and I'll try to answer it.
FARAH: Well, this revealed much to the public that he had a very difficult time relating to everyday working people and how they are affected possibly by the budget deficit. And it's precisely because of that that the candidates decided afterwards for the next two election cycles and in this election cycle to manipulate and sanitize the town hall format.
MOYERS: The candidates got their way.
LEHRER: The audience participants are bound by the following rule. They shall not ask follow-up questions or otherwise participate in the extended discussion. And the questioner's microphone will be turned off after he or she completes asking the question.
MOYERS: What's more, town hall questions would have to be submitted in advance.
FARAH: They had every member in the town hall audience write their questions on index cards and give them to Jim Lehrer.
He would point to the individual and have him ask the question. The consequence, of course, was no matter how good a person Jim Lehrer is, he's still asking all the questions.
The audience members are just there as props. He's still picking the ones to be asked. So it shows the sanitization of the town hall format, showed the evolution of how the candidates are increasingly controlling whatever they can control to avoid mistakes.
MOYERS: Let's go back to the second debate in 2000. You say that was probably the most agreeable Presidential debate in history.
BUSH: Yeah, I agree.
GORE: I agree with that. The Governor and I agree.
BUSH: I think the administration did the right thing.
GORE: I agree with that.
LEHRER: You have a different view of that?
BUSH: No, I don't really.
MOYERS: Gore and Bush agreed to send more money on anti-ballistic missiles, on mandatory testing in schools.
GORE: I agree with Governor Bush that we should have new accountability. Testing of students�
MOYERS: On training Colombian troops for the drug war.
BUSH: You know, I supported the administration in Colombia.
MOYERS: They agreed that we should prevent gays from being allowed to marry.
BUSH: A marriage should be between a man and a woman.
LEHRER: Vice President Gore?
GORE: I agree with that.
MOYERS: They agreed to sign a racial profiling law, to bail out Mexico with IMF loans.
LEHRER: Is there any difference?
GORE: I haven't heard a big difference in the last few exchanges.
BUSH: Well I think it's hard to tell�
MOYERS: And later on in that debate, Bush said�
BUSH: It seems like we're having a great love fest tonight.
MOYERS: "We're having a great love fest right now." You remember that?
FARAH: Absolutely I remember that. The point of the Presidential debate is to highlight the differences in authentic discussion for the American people. And when you have a debate like you see in 2000 with a moderator posing very simple questions and with the candidates agreeing on those questions and actually not being able to address each other, you end up with 37 percent of the answers and the candidates agreeing with each other.
And when Bush said we're having a great love fest it doesn't just relate to the fact that on the various issues they're agreeing on, it also relates to the fact that they're not even confronting each other in debate. It should be a more confrontational process with Candidate A saying, "I disagree with that point. I challenge that point." And in 2000 when Gore tried to challenge President Bush and tried to raise a question to President Bush, the moderator said, "Now, now, Vice-President. You have to stop. You're violating the rules."
MODERATOR: Both of you have now violated, excuse me. Both of you have now violated your own rules. Hold that thought.
GORE: I've been trying so hard not to.
MODERATOR: I know, I know. But under your all's rules you are not allowed to ask each other a question. I let you do it a moment ago.
BUSH: Twice.
MODERATOR: Now you just� twice, sorry.
GORE: That's an interruption, by the way.
MODERATOR: That's an interruption, okay. But anyhow, you just did it so now�
BUSH: I'm sorry. I apologize, Mr. Vice President.
MODERATOR: You aren't allowed to do that either, see?
FARAH: I thought this was outrageous. This is a debate. This is not a little conversation going on in a living room. This is a debate. We're supposed to have the candidates talking to each other.
These aren't gods. These are our public servants. And it's their responsibility to discuss something in front of each other.
MOYERS: So, what happens if there's a moment of spontaneous debate?
GORE: Affirmative action doesn't mean quotas. Are you for it without quotas?
BUSH: I may not be for your version, Mr. Vice President, but I'm for what I just described to the lady. She heard my answer.
GORE: Are you for what the Supreme Court says is a constitutional way of having affirmative action?
MODERATOR: Let's go on to another�
GORE: I think that speaks for itself.
BUSH: No, it doesn't speak for itself, Mr. Vice President, it speaks for the fact that there are certain rules in this that we all agree to, but evidently rules don't mean anything.
MOYERS: Do you think the people watching knew that the rules had been written by the two parties?
FARAH: Oh, of course not. They had no idea. They thought the Commission on Presidential Debates, whose name sounds like a government commission, it sounds like a lovely agency that was commissioned or chartered by Congress. They thought this: organizations had decided that these rules best served the public interest. They had no idea that behind closed doors leading negotiators hand-picked by the candidates were determining that the candidates could not even ask themselves questions.
MOYERS: The Commission is in fact a private corporation, founded by the then chairmen of the Republican and Democratic national parties. They're still running the show.
FARAH: Every four years, the Commission on Presidential Debate publishes candidate selection criteria and proposes debate formats in order to comply with federal election law.
But questions concerning debate format and debate schedule are ultimately resolved behind closed doors between negotiators for the Republican and Democratic nominees.
MOYERS: That wasn't the case in the beginning. The first televised presidential debates, between Kennedy and Nixon in 1960, were sponsored by the networks.
President Lyndon Johnson refused to debate his opponent, Barry Goldwater, in 1964 and the next debate didn't occur until 1976. By then, the nonpartisan League of Women Voters had become the sponsor.
MOYERS: In the interest of full disclosure I have to acknowledge that I was a moderator in 1980 I think, probably before you were born. At that time, the debates were under the auspices of the League of Women Voters. And I have to say thanks to the League, this sort of thing was not happening.
FARAH: The League of Women Voters was a genuinely nonpartisan organization that fought on behalf of the American people. It took its role as a sponsor seriously. In 1980, when John B. Anderson bolted the Republican Party to run as an Independent for the Presidency of the United States, the League decided to invite John Anderson to participate in the Presidential debate.
MOYERS: Republican John Anderson had served in Congress for almost 20 years before becoming an independent candidate for President.
FARAH: President Jimmy Carter at the time refused to debate Anderson because he thought Anderson would take more votes away from him. So the League was confronted with a dilemma. Does it capitulate to the President of the United States? Or does it invite an Independent candidate the American people want to see. Well, the League had guts and it went forward and it invited Anderson to participate in a 1980 Presidential debate even though President Carter refused to show up in front of 50 million viewers.
MOYERS: In 1984, four years later, the League had to stand up once again to intimidation from the major party candidates. Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale kept vetoing every journalist the League proposed as a questioner.
FARAH: The campaigns got together and tried to get rid of all the difficult questions. What did the League do? Well, instead of silently accepting this reality it held a press conference in Washington. And it lambasted the candidates for, quote, "totally abusing the process."
MOYERS: Moderator Barbara Walters was left without a full panel of journalists.
WALTERS: The candidates were given a list of almost 100 qualified journalists from all the media and could agree on only these three fine journalists. As moderator and on behalf of my fellow journalists, I very much regret as does the League of Women Voters, that this situation has occurred.
MOYERS: So there came this moment when these uppity women at the League of Women Voters said to the Presidential candidates, "You can't write the rules." And the two parties then did what?
FARAH: The parties were sick and tired of a women's organization telling their boys who they had to participate with, in what format, with whom, and what questions would have to be asked.
MOYERS: So the two parties got together.
FARAH: Michael Dukakis and George H.W. Bush negotiated the first Memoranda of Understanding in 1988. So they hand it to the League.
The League says, "What is this? We don't do this. We don't put our respected name and trusted name onto a secret document you've negotiated. We refuse to implement this."
NEUMAN: The League of Women Voters is announcing today that we have no intention of becoming an accessory to the hoodwinking of the American public. Under these circumstances, the League is withdrawing its sponsorship of the presidential debates.
FARAH: It's precisely because the League of Women Voters was willing to fight on behalf of the public interest and refused to comply with the secret demands of the Republican and Democratic nominees, that the parties got together and created their own compliant commission.
MOYERS: And that's how the Commission on Presidential Debates came into being. It has supervised every presidential debate since 1988.
But not until the publication of George Farah's book this year had anyone but a handful of insiders seen the secret contracts for the last three debates, negotiated between the candidates and then handed to the debate commission.
Those contracts were leaked to Farah.
MOYERS: This is one of those Memorandum of Understanding that you got.
FARAH: Yes.
MOYERS: This is the 1996� the "agreement," it calls itself. Describe this to me.
FARAH: It's a binding contract.
And this contract dictates who will participate, who will ask the questions, the heights of the podiums, every detail conceivable.
It's a glorified bipartisan press conference. They get a question from a moderator that they selected and they can predict� they've memorized the response to. They issue a memorized sound bite which fits a very nice perfect 90-second response slot that has been stipulated in the contract.
Their opponent cannot challenge their answer because they're prohibited by the contract. The moderator can't challenge their answer because they can't ask follow-up questions.
Imagine for a moment if we could have a debate in which the candidates actually responded to each other. That's what a debate is. Person A makes a statement. Person B responds to the statement.
MOYERS: Dictionary, Webster I think, calls it a contentious exchange between two parties.
FARAH: A contentious exchange. Well, I haven't seen a contentious exchange in 17 years since the Commission of Presidential Debates has hosted these forums because the candidates can't even communicate. This is not a confrontation. And the American people sitting back at home don't know why these candidates can't communicate with each other. Don't know why they're just reciting the same memorized sound bites that they're reciting in their 30-second ads. And they're turning off their television sets.
MOYERS: Something else the public didn't know: the secret contracts gave the Republican and Democratic candidates veto power over other participants.
In 1992, the Republicans believed candidate Ross Perot would hurt Bill Clinton's chances and the Democrats didn't want to alienate Perot supporters, so the two parties invited the feisty Texan to take part in the debates.
PEROT: Now, all these fellows with thousand-dollar suits and alligator shoes running up and down the halls of Congress that make policy now, the lobbyists, the PAC guys, the foreign lobbyists, and what-have-you, they'll be over there in the Smithsonian, you know because we're going to get rid of them.
MOYERS: But four years later, in 1996, neither side wanted Perot there.
FARAH: 1996 is a wonderful example of what happens when the candidates control the Presidential debate process. Bill Clinton, who was the Democratic nominee, and Bob Dole, who was the Republican nominee, hatched a secret agreement to exclude Ross Perot from the Presidential debates. Bob Dole desperately wanted Perot excluded because he thought that Perot would take more votes away from him. And Clinton wanted what George Stephanopolous called a non-event. The smallest possible audience because he was virtually 20 points in the poll and didn't want anything to shake up the race. So they hatched a secret agreement.
MOYERS: That secret agreement specifically spelled out only Bill Clinton and Bob Dole would debate. So Ross Perot was left out in the cold.
Four years later, in 2000, the Republican and Democratic candidates kept Pat Buchanan out of the debates too, although he had qualified for more than 12 million dollars in public financing.
Ralph Nader, who had made it onto the ballots in 43 states and the District of Columbia, was not only kept out of the debates but was prevented from getting into a debate site even though he showed up with a credential.
NADER: We all have the same so-called badge. Everyone got in but me.
MOYERS: Wouldn't including not just Nader and Pat Buchanan but the Libertarian candidate and other third parties that might arise, wouldn't that lead to a kind of chaos in our political system, a kind of anarchy?
FARAH: Well, that's what the Commission on Presidential Debates would like the American people to believe. They claim that hundreds of candidates run for office every year. And they're right.
Hundreds do run like Billy Joe Clegg of the Clegg Won't Pull Your Leg Party and Jeff Costa of the Crustacean Liberation Party whose entire platform is committed to the liberation of crabs and lobsters from our nation's oceans and seas.
MOYERS: Farah says you don't have to open the doors to just anybody. There are ways to include viable, legitimate third-party candidates. And democracy is served when we do.
FARAH: Third-party candidates don't regularly win federal elections. They don't. But they raise critical issues that the major parties eventually co-opt.
Third parties are responsible for the abolition of slavery, women's suffrage, public power, public education, social security, unemployment compensation, the direct election of senators, the formation of labor unions. The list goes on and on. And these candidates before Presidential debates were ever established raised these issues in public forums.
Millions of Americans listened to their ideas, read about them in newspapers, heard about them on the radio. And it forced the Republican and Democratic parties to co-opt these issues and integrate them into law. Now the American people never get to hear about an issue and the third-party candidate cannot break the bipartisan conspiracy of silence on critical issues the American people care about.
MOYERS: That happened when Ross Perot was excluded from the '96 presidential debates. But he had the money to fight back with ads of his own.
1996 PEROT INFOMERCIAL: 76% of Americans want Ross Perot in tonight's debate. The Republicans and Democrats are desperate to keep Ross out. But why? Maybe it's because the eleven big companies that fund the debate commission pump millions into forcing NAFTA through congress and are giving millions more to the Democrats and Republicans. That trade deal has cost more than half a million American jobs.
MOYERS: In the first three debates in 2000, you never heard the word corporation mentioned?
FARAH: Never, not once.
MOYERS: There was no reference to the World Trade Organization, to free trade or to labor.
FARAH: When you have two parties who receive 80% of their contributions from business interests excluding other voices who are critical of corporate power, and excluding moderators and panelists who might question them sharply on their relationship with corporate power, you end up with a Presidential debate that entirely excludes possibly the most important or one of the most important issues confronting the American people. That is growing corporate power and how it undermines our democratic process and economic system.
MOYERS: You have a chart in your book on page 13. I suspect that most of my viewers and most of the people who will be watching the debates in a couple of weeks don't know this. That the national sponsors of the Commission on Presidential Debates include, 1992: AT&T, Atlantic Richfield, Dun & Bradstreet, Ford Motor Company, Hallmark, IBM, J.P. Morgan, Philip Morris, Prudential. 1996: Anheuser Busch, Dun & Bradstreet, Lucent Technologies, Philip Morris, Sara Lee, Sprint. In 2000, Anheuser Busch, US Airways, 3Com.
You say that this results in the debates becoming corporate carnivals.
FARAH: Yes. If you attend a debate site what you see are huge Anheuser Busch tents. Anheuser Busch girls in skimpy outfits and they're passing out beer and they're passing out pamphlets that denounce beer taxes. You have giant posters of the various corporate sponsors also passing out other materials that are promoting their goods, their products and their political issues.
MOYERS: The public at home never sees this.
FARAH: Oh, they never see this. These are the corporations who are primarily paying for the debates that tens of millions of Americans are watching. And they get to bring their clients to debate sites, entertain them. They bring them to a nice suite. And they take them to the debates and sit in the front rows of these presidential debate forums. They get tax deductions for their major contributions to the Commission on Presidential Debates.
And when I asked Frank Farenkopf, co-chair of the Commission on Presidential Debates, whether he thought it was okay for beer and tobacco companies to be hosting and sponsoring these presidential debates, he said, "Boy, you are talking to the wrong guy. I'm a lobbyist for the gambling industry."
MOYERS: George Farah says there is an alternative to partisan control of debates sponsored by corporations and run by lobbyists: a Citizens' Debate Commission. He spells it all out in the book and a lot of people have already signed on.
MOYERS: Why do you care about this so much?
FARAH: Because this is a democracy. And we have to fight on behalf of our democratic process. Our democratic process is at stake.
Your viewers have power. These are political candidates that are fighting desperately for their votes. They can demand of these candidates that they want real debates.
This is the most important country in the world. And we need to have an authentic debate so the American people can choose the most powerful human being in the world.
MOYERS: You can find out a lot more about George Farah and Open Debates by going to the NOW page at pbs.org. You'll see that they and other reform advocates are claiming some modest success this week.
For the first time in 16 years the contract between the two campaigns � the memorandum of understanding � has been made public. This is a copy of it. We'll post it on our Web site. And for the first time in 12 years there will be more than one moderator, the Commission, not the candidates, has chosen them. Even so, the Commission is insisting those moderators sign the agreement, to make sure no sudden journalistic urge violates the boundaries set by the candidates.
Meanwhile, a federal judge has called for an investigation into whether the Commission acted in a partisan manner when it refused to allow any third-party candidates to attend the 2000 debates. And this week the President of the National Urban League accused the Commission of organizing the debates to keep urban and civil rights issues off the agenda. So here we go again, with what David called those debatable debates controlled by what amounts to a political cartel.~

Well that is all for today...

To sign a petition against the current form of debates go to OpenDebates.com.On another subject I do think Bush had an earpiece in the first debate with all the bulges he had in whatever was under his suit as seen 'here'.

click this!!!

Now the quotes:

�They defend their errors as if they were defending their inheritance."--Edmund Burke

"Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth � the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him. But you look on and you cry that money corrupted him. Did it? Or did he corrupt his money? Do not envy a worthless heir; his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it. Do not think that it should have been distributed among you; loading the world with fifty parasites instead of one, would not bring back the dead virtue which was the fortune. Money is a living power that dies without its root. Money will not serve the mind that cannot match it. Is this the reason why you call it evil?"--Ayn Rand

"Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few."--George Bernard Shaw

"We are Americans, We have the right to participate and debate any administration!"--Senator Hilary Clinton

�Frankly, I do not expect to be invited to the �official� corporate-sponsored debates and I�m one of four candidates -- Nader, Badnarik of the Libertarian Party and Peroutka from the Constitution Party are the others�who are on enough ballots to theoretically win the presidency who are being excluded. And yes, I have said repeatedly, on the record, in print and on broadcast, that I am willing to commit non-violent civil disobedience to protest the exclusion of the Green Party. I think we�ve done an admirable job of presenting alternative viewpoints to the voters. Michael Badnarik and I debated in Miami across the street from the first corporate debate and we also debated during the RNC. He and I will debate in Texas on October 7 and we�ll both participate in debates with other candidates at Cornell and Eastern Tennessee University, too. I think we need to pressure not only the corporate debates but the �open� debate sponsors to set realistic standards which will allow for independent and third party participation. Frankly, I think the standard should be whether a candidate is on sufficient state ballots to win. And I say that not because I�ve met that standard, but because qualifying for the ballot is a daunting enough prospect as it is. Opening up debates to people who qualify by this standard won�t let so many people in that the critics can say that they would become unwieldy. There would actually be fewer participants than there were in the Democratic primary debates.�--Green Party Presidential candidate David Cobb

"If you keep doing what you've always done, you're going to get what you always have."--Libertarian Presidential Candidate Michael Badnarik

"The golden rule of conduct . . . is mutual toleration, seeing that we will never all think alike and we shall always see Truth in fragment and from different points of vision."--Mohandas K. Gandhi

"The people as a body cannot deliberate. Nevertheless, they will feel an irresistible impulse to act, and their resolutions will be dictated to them by their demagogues... and the violent men, who are the most forward to gratify those passions, will be their favorites. What is called the government of the people is in fact too often the arbitrary power of such men. Here, then, we have the faithful portrait of democracy."--Congressional Representative Fisher Ames, The Dangers of American Liberty (1805)

"No nation went into oblivion or was destroyed because it had bad laws, or because its statesmen were not intelligent, but because of INTERNAL CORRUPTION, and because they could not maintain the POWER OF SELF-CONTROL."--Melvin J. Ballard

"I think that the country needs a debate that's not a screaming match. . . . And I think too many times we have these arguments on these talk shows where they're trying to get ratings by generating heat, when we ought to be trying to generate more light."--President Bill Clinton

"Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos."--John Marshall, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court

"There has been a closing down of the American mind, and it worries me. If a pro-Palestinian person comes to speak, you have to have a pro-Israeli person. That's not the way to foster debate. The debate does not always occur in television terms, which is you against me. The debate occurs in people's minds, it's ongoing, and what you learn from one person you apply to question the next one."--Ariel Dorfman, a professor of literature and Latin American studies at Duke University

"We are now forming a Republican form of government. Real Liberty is not found in the extremes of democracy, but in moderate governments. If we incline too much to democracy, we shall soon shoot into a monarchy, or some other form of dictatorship."--General Alexander Hamilton

"If power corrupts, weakness in the seat of power, with its constant necessity of deals and bribes and compromising arrangements,corrupts even more."--Historian Barbara Tuchman

"The partisan, when he is engaged in a dispute, cares nothing about the rights of the question, but is anxious only to convince his hearers of his own assertions."�Plato

"Our worst enemies here are not the ignorant and simple, however cruel; our worst enemies are the intelligent and corrupt."--Graham Greene

"If you can't convince them, confuse them."--President Harry Truman

"Political demagoguery is, to some extent, a problem in our country. The particular form this demagoguery takes is only a passing phase, and when our current dragons and inner phantoms have been laid to rest, the eternal demagogue will arise anew. He will accuse others of conspiracy in order to prove his own importance. He will try to intimidate those who are neither so iron-fisted nor so hotheaded as he, and temporarily he will drag some people into the web of his delusions. Perhaps he will even wear a mantle of martyrdom to arouse the tears of the weak-hearted. With his emotionalism and suspicion, he will shatter the trust of citizens in one another."--Joost Meerloo

"...to expose the undemocratic nature of these debates, this election and our government. These are not debates, these are infomercials."--Green Party Presidential Candidate David Cobb

"The sounder your argument, the more satisfaction you get out of it."--Edgar Watson Howe

"Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many."--Eric Hoffer

"There is no such thing as a free press. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who would dare to write his honest opinion. The business of the journalist is to destroy truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell himself, his country, and his race, for his daily bread. We are tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are jumping jacks; they pull our strings, we dance; our talents, our possibilities, and our lives are the property of these men. We are intellectual prostitutes."--New York Times Journalist John Swinton

"Whoever controls the media�the images�controls the culture."--Allen Ginsberg

"The bigger the information media, the less courage and freedom they allow. Bigness means weakness."--Eric Sevareid

"Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first."--President Ronald Reagan

�We live in a dirty and dangerous world. There are some things the general public does not need to know, and shouldn�t. I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows.�--Newspaper Publisher Katherine Graham

"Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state."--Noam Chomsky

"We have made the Reich by propaganda."--Joseph Goebbels, NAZI politician, minister of propaganda, member of Hitler�s cabinet

"For this is the true strength of guilty kings, When they corrupt the souls of those they rule."--Matthew Arnold

"The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted."--President James Madison

�But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue?"--Edmund Burke

"Sir, I would rather be right than be President."--Senator Henry Clay

"Since the general civilization of mankind, I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people, by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpations."--President James Madison

"If only the presidential debate commission and the Democrat and Republican parties would display the same courage and integrity that PBS has displayed, the American public would actually be offered a true presidential debate, and a fair and open election this November."--Constitution Party Presidential Candidate Michael A. Peroutka

"In my book, "The Good Fight" I quote Eugene Debs� "The American people can have anything they want, the problem is they don�t seem to want anything at all, or at least it seems that way on Election Day." We are all prisoners of an exclusive two-party monopoly with a barrier called an electoral college and we�ve got to break out of prison. We have to liberate our minds, begin voting our conscience, and stop voting for politicians who go to Washington and month after month vote against their supporters."--Reform Party Candidate Ralph Nader

"It demonstrates to the American people there is a growing movement of resistance against the corporate takeover of our government, our elections, our culture and our society. You know, nonviolent civil disobedience has been necessary to make systemic change throughout history. Going to jail for justice in our country has a long and esteemed history in our country and I am proud to participate in it."�Green Party Presidential Candidate David Cobb

"It brings attention to the fact that George Bush and John Kerry are not the only candidates. I'm a legitimate candidate from a legitimate party, I have a right to have my party's message heard. But more importantly, the public has a right to hear all sides of the message so they can go to the polls in November and make an educated choice."�-Libertarian Presidential Candidate Michael Badnarik

�By not allowing any other candidates to be visible in the media during the debates, the main thing being short-changed (besides those candidates' ideas) is the overall civic awareness of our nation's voters.��-The Daily Barometer Online

�The The Commission on Presidential Debates is an unconscionable fraud.��-Walter Cronkite

"The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. His heart sank as he thought of the enormous power arrayed against him, the ease with which any Party intellectual would overthrow him in debate, the subtle arguments which he would not be able to understand, much less answer. And yet he was in the right! They were wrong and he was right."--George Orwell

�The Big Lie is a major untruth uttered frequently by leaders as a means of duping and controlling the constituency.�--Adolf Hitler

"Those who stand for nothing fall for anything."--General Alexander Hamilton

PUBLIUS

Presidential candidates David Cobb and Michael Badnarik before being arrested