You ask why we aren't making Dennis Kucinich president?
It is because the corporate owned media prohibited him from participating in the debates. The corporate owned media pre-selected our candidates for us. He would not collaborate with the big corporations. That is why we are not making Dennis Kucinich president.
When the corporate media prohibited Kucinich from the debates, all the other candidates should have refused to get up on to the stage for the debate. If they had any courage, they would have boycotted the debates. Since the remaining candidates didn't boycott the debates, it became obvious that only the corporate collaborators would be allowed to speak on our public airwaves.
Kucinich took it to court saying that the airwaves belong to the public and therefore the corporations that control the media don't have the legal right to exclude him. The neocon judge ruled against him.
Debate is a misnomer because debate implies that there is an opposition with which to debate. Since the corporate media excluded the opposition voices like Kucinich, it was a forum and not a debate.
Kucinich is not president because the neocon propaganda convinces people to vote against their own best interests.
Kucinich is not president because he is not a charismatic leader but a funny looking vegan.
Kucinich is not president because he has a populist platform instead of a vague promise of "change."
I ask, change from what to what?
We just had 7 years of a president that lied every step of the way. Kucinich is not president because the American public prefers liars.
Kucinich is not president because he refuses to play the pretend game that the majority of members of Congress like to play.
Kucinich is not president because the fascists already rule the USA and make billion dollar election campaigns and conventions as a veil of myth to keep the American public drowning in lies. Only liars and neocon collaborators can be president at this stage of American history. Democracy is dead.
Bitter and discouraged but always in Peace
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An article by Student Researchers: Erin Galbraith, Natalie Dale, and Kerry Headley
ReplyDeleteSonoma State University 2008
The Obama and McCain campaigns jointly negotiated a detailed secret contract dictating the terms of the 2008 debates. This included who got to participate, what topics were to be raised, and the structure of the debate formats.
Since 1987, a private corporation created by and for the Republican and Democratic parties called the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) has sponsored the US Presidential debates and implemented debate contracts. In order to shield the major party candidates from criticism, CPD has refused to release debate contract information to the public.
In 1986, the Republican and Democratic National Committees ratified an agreement to take over the presidential debates from the nonpartisan League of Women Voters. Fifteen months later, then-Republican Party chair Frank Fahrenkopf and then-Democratic Party chair Paul Kirk incorporated the Commission on Presidential Debates. Fahrenkopf and Kirk still co-chair the Commission on Presidential Debates, and every four years it implements and conceals contracts jointly drafted by the Republican and Democratic nominees.
Before the CPD ’s formation, the League of Women Voters served as a genuinely nonpartisan presidential debate sponsor from 1976 until 1984, ensuring the inclusion of popular independent candidates and prohibiting major party campaigns from manipulating debate formats.
In 1988, when the George Bush and Michael Dukakis campaigns drafted the first secret debate contract, a n MOU that dictated who got to participate, and who would ask the questions, the League declined to implement it. Instead, the League issued a blistering press release claiming, the demands of the two campaign organizations would perpetrate a fraud on the American voter.
Consequently, the CPD was created to step in. Since they took control of the presidential debates in 1988, funding has been primarily from corporate contributions. Frank Fahrenkopf and Paul Kirk, who co-chair and control the CPD, are registered lobbyists for multinational corporations. Kirk lobbies for Hoechst Marion Roussel, a German pharmaceutical company. Fahrenkopf lobbies for the $54 billion gambling industry. These are the guys, author George Farah points out, deciding who gets to participate in the most important political forums in the USA. He adds, Kirk and Fahrenkopf’s lobbying practices demonstrate a willingness to protect corporate interests at the expense of voters ’ interests .
Historically, third party candidates have played critical roles in our democracy by introducing popular and groundbreaking issues that were eventually co-opted by major parties such as the abolition of slavery, women’s right to vote, social security, child labor laws, public schools, the direct election of senators, paid vacation, unemployment compensation, and the formation of labor unions. With third-party candidates excluded from discourse, they can’t break the bipartisan silence on issues where the major parties are at odds with most Americans.
For the last twenty years, while the CPD has sponsored the presidential debates, challenging questions, assertive moderators, follow-up questions, candidate-to-candidate questioning, and rebuttals have been excluded from presidential debates. The CPD’s formats have typically prevented in-depth examination of critical issues and allowed the candidates to recite a series of memorized sound bites. Walter Cronkite has called CPD-sponsored presidential debates an unconscionable fraud.