After ignoring the "Someone died when Clinton blew his wad" or something like that thread, I decided I would start my own little thread.

WTF is with these horrible debates?! I'll watch tonight, but the pussification of this country is out of control. Toss the candidate up on stage and let an aggressive moderator lace into 'em. Watch 'em sweat. That's a debate...

Found this to be a good article as well:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...toryId=4052162

The Tavis Smiley Show, September 29, 2004 · After weeks of political wrangling, Sen. John Kerry and President Bush will square off for the first of three key presidential debates. Both camps have agreed to an elaborate, 32-page contract that spells out everything from the size of the dressing rooms to permitted camera angles.

But the controversy over the debates threatens to overshadow the events themselves. Some citizen groups complain that the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) isn't as non-partisan as it should be, and that Kerry and Bush won't be pressed on urban issues. Commentator Connie Rice says that's just the tip of the iceberg, and she's got another Top 10 list -- this time: Top 10 Secrets They Don't Want You to Know About the Debates.

(10.) They aren't debates!

"A debate is a head-to-head, spontaneous, structured argument over the merits of an issue," Rice says. "Under the ridiculous 32-page contract that reads like the rules for the Miss America Pageant, there will be no candidate-to-candidate questions, no rebuttal to your opponent's points, no cross questions or cross answers, no rebuttals, no follow-up questions -- that's not a debate, that's a news conference."

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

"The League of Women Voters ran these debates with an iron hand as open, transparent, non-partisan events from 1976 to 1984," Rice says. "The men running the major campaigns ended their control when the League defiantly included John Anderson and Ross Perot, and used tough moderators and formats the parties didn't like. The parties snatched the debates from the League and formed the Commission on Presidential Debates -- the CPD -- in 1986."

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

"CPD should stand for 'Cloaking-device for Party Deceptions' -- it is not an independent commission on anything. The CPD is under the total control of the Republican and Democratic parties and by definition bipartisan, not non-partisan. Walter Cronkite called CPD-sponsored debates an 'unconscionable fraud.'"

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

"Under what I call the Debate Suppression and Monopolization Clause of the contract, it is illegal for the candidates to debate each other anywhere else during the campaign," Rice says. "We need a new criminal law for reckless endangerment of democracy."

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

"This is what I call the Obstruction of Democratic Debate Rule, which sets an impossibly high threshold for third-party candidates... Where are we, Russia? Isn't Vladimir Putin wiping out democracy in Russia by excluding all opposing candidates from the airwaves during his re-election campaigns? Most new ideas come from third parties -- they should be 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.

"It's not enough to rig the debate -- they have to rig the audience, too? The contract reads: 'The debate will take place before a live audience of between 100 and 150 persons who... describe themselves as likely voters who are soft Bush supporters or soft Kerry supporters.' We should crash this charade and jump up in the middle to declare ourselves hard opponents of this Kabuki dance."

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

"Soft and silent... In what I'm calling the Silence of the Lambs Clause of this absurd contract, the audience may not move, speak, gesture, cough or otherwise show that they are alive and thinking."

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

"Other than the stupidity of the debate contract, what topic do you know that can be extendedly discussed in 30 seconds?"

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

"Really important but sticky or tough issues get axed, because the parties control the questions and topics," Rice says. "For example, in 2000, Gore and Bush mentioned the following issues zero times: Child poverty, the drug war, homelessness, working-class families, NAFTA, prisons, corporate crime and corporate welfare."

(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?"

 

 

 

 

All these rules ruin the intentions of debates and suck the usefulness out of them. WTF, they can't even respond to each other! I want to see these two going at it like Bill O'Rielly and Michael Moore. If it degenerates into name-calling and a shoving match, all the better. A Bush/ Kerry street fight (perhaps somewhere in Detroit) would get huge ratings, talk about reality TV.

Here is what the debate should look like...

Kerry: GW, you're a rich, privileged, ignorant Texas redneck!
Bush: John you're a f*ckin p*ssy and a rich, privileged New England snob!
Kerry: Well at least daddy didn't give me all my money and buy me a baseball team and keep me out of Vietnam.
Bush: No, you just married two women for their money.
Kerry: You have ruined the economy and made the rich richer while the poor have become poorer...
Bush: hey a-hole you probably laughed all the way to the bank with those upper class tax cuts! You know as much about the poor as I do about proper grammar and pronunciation.
Kerry: Your ill conceived and poorly executed war will continue to grossly inflate the federal deficit.
Bush: So will your bloated social welfare programs.
Kerry: You couldn't even catch Osama
Bush: You voted to catch Osama before you voted against it.
Kerry: You have alienated our allies and defied the United Nations and ruined American prestige abroad.
Bush: I hear that you and Chirac and Koffi Annan had a threesome and sent the video to Schroeder. The world wants you elected b/c they know you are a gutless weenie too.
Kerry: You are corrupt and in the pocket of big business and the oil companies in particular.
Bush: You take as much money as anyone else from special interests.
Kerry: You have let American job slip away overseas...
Bush: Like your wife's ketchup empire jobs?
Kerry: You were a coward who wouldn't even serve his country in Vietnam.
Bush: You came back from Vietnam and screwed everyone who was still over there.
Kerry: at least I went to Vietnam. I know more about military matters than you and would make a better commander in chief.
Bush: You never met a military weapon system that you didn't try and kill and now you want our soldiers to trust you?
Kerry: You recklessly went to war in Iraq for oil and personal reasons.
Bush: You voted to let me do that before you voted against it.
Kerry: You lied to the American public and to congress to gather support for your war.
Bush: So, which is it John, am I too dumb to be president or am
I a clever mastermind who tricked you and the rest of your democrat friends in congress to get my way?
Kerry: You vice president is a greedy old man who made all his money in the oil business and is a dirty as they come.
Bush: Your vice presidential candidate is a greedy young, inexperienced ambulance chaser.
Kerry: You want to amend the constitution to prohibit homosexuals from being married.
Bush: You... hey John, where do you stand on that one?
Kerry: I wanted to allow homosexuals to be married before I didn't want them to be married.
Kerry: You are an aggressive, corrupt, reactionary neoconservative, right wing stooge.
Bush: You are a wishy washy, tax and spend left wing nutjob.
Kerry: You are Cheney's stupid little monkey.
Bush: Your wife is an ugly, mannish shrew.
Kerry: So was Bill Clinton's wife, he was a good president. Your daughters are drunken *****.
Bush: At least Clinton was funny, you are just an elitist jerkoff!
Kerry: I'm a Yale educated man and a member of the elite and secretive Skull and Bones...
Bush: Really?! Me too! Do you remember the goat?
Kerry: How could I forget, good times...

I could go on and on like this but there is work to be done.

 

Bush: So, which is it John, am I too dumb to be president or am
I a clever mastermind who tricked you and the rest of your democrat friends in congress to get my way?


That's great!

 

Does the moderator get a huge rubber d!ldo to whack (no pun intended) whoever speaks out of turn over the head with it?

 

Now THAT'S a great idea! The moderator will also be required to lube up the fake wong as to leave a gross slimey 'whack mark' on the face of the shmuck that interrupted...

This idea is sure to pump up the ratings of the debates.

 

OR,

behind each candidate, is an F-150... everytime someone f's up, it starts up and jerks forward, and at first, gently bumps, the more someone f's up, the harder they get shoved until ultimately, they get run over...

 

I'm moving back to the homeland... Webmaster, is there a polish verision of F1-fiddy online? I'm sure that one isn't filled with political babble.... just "How do I turn this thing on?" posts.

 

See debate thread...