Good grief that guy should have seen the 3 billion dollar submarine electric
boat in Groton, CT just launches. He should also see how many aircraft carriers
are being built, the Lydon Johnson, the G W Bush, etc.
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Miriam Vieni
Sent: Tuesday, September 20, 2016 12:27 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: There's No Debate
Periodically, I have conversations with people about what's going on in our
world. Just now, I talked with the very kind man who is at the desk downstairs
on weekdays. He's probably in his sixties, Jewish, very kind, and has MS. He
told me about his wife, a speech therapist, who makes less now than she did 15
years ago because the funds for the program in which she works, have been cut.
I began talking about how if we keep spending money for war, we can't have
enough for our domestic needs. But he thinks we're spending less for our
military than we used to - no more big ships, no more big armies. That's what
he believes. He says that all the money is going to politicians. He absolutely
doesn't understand that the politicians are controlled by the financial
institutions and corporations. He doesn't see it because no one on cable TV
tells him that.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Tuesday, September 20, 2016 11:24 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: There's No Debate
"The candidates and the media have thoroughly corrupted the presidential
debates. Our democracy deserves better." So says Bill Moyers. But
it's far more than the debates that should concern Americans. The
entire election process has been corrupted. As long as Americans allow the
Corporate Empire's Ruling Class to control elections through their mass media,
we can be assured that there will be no free election.
Carl Jarvis
On 9/19/16, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
There's No Debatefor a change.
Published on
Monday, September 19, 2016
by
BillMoyers.com
There's No Debate
The candidates and the media have thoroughly corrupted the
presidential debates. Our democracy deserves better. There's still
time
bypower.
Bill Moyers, Michael Winship
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump during primary debates. (Left: Patrick T.
Fallon/Bloomberg via Getty Images; Right: Geoff Robins/AFP/Getty
Images) Let's call the whole thing off.
Not the election, although if we only had a magic reset button we
could pretend this sorry spectacle never happened and start all over.
No, we mean the presidential debates - which, if the present format
and moderators remain as they are, threaten an effect on democracy
more like Leopold and Loeb than Lincoln and Douglas.
The official presidential debates coming up are dominated by the
candidates and the media, and therein lurk both the problems and the
reasons to scrap this fraudulent nonsense for something sane and serious.
We had a humiliating sneak preview Sept. 7, when NBC's celebrity
interviewer Matt Lauer hosted a one-hour "Commander-in-Chief Forum" in
which Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump spoke with Lauer from the same
stage but in separate interviews. The event was supposed to be about
defense and veterans issues, yet to everyone's bewilderment (except
the Trump camp, which must have been cheering out of camera range that
Lauer was playing their song), Lauer seemed to think Clinton's emails
were worthy of more questions than, say, nuclear war, global warming
or the fate of Syrian refugees.
Of course, that wasn't a debate per se but neither are the sideshows
that we call the official debates, even though the rules put in place
by the nonprofit Commission on Presidential Debates are meant to
insure a certain amount of fairness and decorum - unlike the
trainwreck of "debates" during the primary season, which were run
solely by the parties and media sponsors with no adult supervision.
But despite the efforts of the commission, the official presidential
debates coming up also are dominated by the candidates and the media,
and therein lurk both the problems and the reasons to scrap this
fraudulent nonsense for something sane and serious.
A little history: From 1976, when President Gerald Ford faced off
against Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter, the three presidential debates and
one vice presidential debate were administered by the League of Women
Voters, which did an admirable job under trying circumstances. But
then, as historian Jill Lepore writes in an excellent New Yorker
article on the history of presidential debates, the Reagan White House
wanted to wrest control from the League and give it to the networks.
According to Lepore:
"During Senate hearings, Dorothy Ridings, the president of the League
of Women Voters, warned against that move: 'Broadcasters are
profit-making corporations operating in an extremely competitive
setting, in which ratings assume utmost importance.' They would make a
travesty of the debates, she predicted, not least because they'd agree
to whatever terms the campaigns demanded. Also: 'We firmly believe
that those who report the news should not make the news.'"
Ridings' prescience proved correct and then some. In 1988, the League
pulled out of the Bush-Dukakis debates, declaring in a press release,
"It has become clear to us that the candidates' organizations aim to
add debates to their list of campaign-trail charades devoid of
substance, spontaneity and answers to tough questions. The League has
no intention of becoming an accessory to the hoodwinking of the
American public."
The giant media conglomerates - NBCUniversal (Comcast), Disney, CBS
Corp., 21st Century Fox, Time Warner - have turned the campaign and
the upcoming debates into profit centers that reap a huge return from
political trivia and titillation.
Walter Cronkite agreed. That same year, he wrote, "The debates are
part of the unconscionable fraud that our political campaigns have
become. Here is a means to present to the American people a rational
exposition of the major issues that face the nation, and the alternate
approaches to their solution.
Yet the candidates participate only with the guarantee of a format
that defies meaningful discourse. They should be charged with
sabotaging the electoral process."
But as Ridings said, it's not just the candidates involved in this
criminal hijacking of discourse. The giant media conglomerates -
NBCUniversal (Comcast), Disney, CBS Corp., 21st Century Fox, Time
Warner - have turned the campaign and the upcoming debates into profit
centers that reap a huge return from political trivia and titillation.
A game show, if you will - a farcical theater of make-believe rigged
by the two parties and the networks to maintain their cartel of money
and
"Debating," Jill Lepore writes, "like voting, is a way for people tolegislatures.
disagree without hitting one another or going to war: it's the key to
every institution that makes civic life possible, from courts to
Without debate, there can be no self-government." But the mediathat fears no rebuttal.
monoliths have taken the democratic purpose of a televised debate - to
inform the public on the issues and the candidates' positions on them
- and reduced it to a mock duel between the journalists who serve as
moderators - too often surrendering their allegedly inquiring minds -
and candidates who know they can simply blow past the questions with
lies that go unchallenged, evasions that fear no rebuke and
demagoguery
Remember that it was CBS CEO Leslie Moonves who whooped about the cashNATO,"
to be made from the campaign, telling an investors conference in
February, "The money's rolling in and this is fun. I've never seen
anything like this, and this going to be a very good year for us.
Bring it on, Donald. Keep going.
Donald's place in this election is a good thing." Oh, yes, good for
Moonves'
annual bonus, but good for democracy? Don't make us laugh. Elaine
Quijano of CBS News will be moderating the vice presidential
candidates' debate on Oct.
4, with Moonves looking over her shoulder.
Remember, too, that both Lauer and Trump are NBCUniversal celebrities
who have earned millions from and for the networks. (Vanity Fair
magazine even reported that NBCUniversal boss Steve Burke had spoken
hypothetically with Trump about continuing The Apprentice from the
White House.) Moderating the first presidential debate on Sept. 26 is
NBC anchorman Lester Holt, a nice and competent fellow, but facing the
same pressure as his fellow teammate Matt Lauer to not offend their
once-and-possibly-future NBC star Donald Trump.
And remember that Anderson Cooper of Time-Warner's CNN, the
all-Trump-all-the-time network, and Martha Raddatz of Disney's ABC
News will anchor the second presidential debate (to her credit,
Raddatz did a good job during the 2012 vice presidential debate) - and
that the final, crucial close encounter between Trump and Clinton will
be moderated by Chris Wallace of Fox, the very "news organization"
that joined with Donald Trump to gleefully spread the Big Lie of
Birtherism that served Trump so well with free publicity (and Fox so
well with ratings) and that Trump now conveniently and hypocritically
repents.
We wait breathlessly to see if during that debate Wallace inquires of
Trump:
"Did you really believe that lying about Barack Obama's birth was good
for the country?" And: "What is your source for saying Hillary Clinton
started the rumor that Obama was not born in America?" And: "How do we
know you won't change your mind again and raise further doubts about
whether the president is an American?" And - to pick up on a
suggestion from The Washington Post's David Fahrenthold, who has been
reporting on Trump's charitable giving - or lack thereof: "Mr. Trump,
will you now follow through on your promise to donate $5 million to
charity once you were given proof that President Obama was born in the
United States? What charity do you have in mind? One of your own,
perhaps?"
Wallace has already admitted he is in no position to hold Trump
accountable for the lies he tells in the "debate" - that "it's not my
job" to fact check either Trump or Clinton during the course of their
appearance with him.
That
should be pleasing to Roger Ailes, who was fired as head of the Fox
News empire for scandalous sexist behavior but who is now giving Trump
debate tips. Wallace is on record saying how much he admired and loved
Ailes, to whom he owes his stardom at Fox - "The best boss I've had in
almost a half a century in journalism," Wallace said.
Such conflicts of interest at the core of the debates reminds us of
what Woody Allen said back in one of his earlier, funnier films - that
the whole thing is a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a
travesty of two mockeries of a sham. And why are we so complacent
about the hijacking of our political process - that it has descended
to this level where the two parties and the media giants pick as the
only surrogates of the American people the minions of an oligarchic
media riddled with cronyism and conflicts of interest?
So yes, scrap the debates as they are and rebuild. Even with a few
days left until the first one there's time to call everyone together,
announce that our democracy deserves better and change the rules.
Why not put the League of Women Voters back in charge, with just the
two candidates and a ruthless timekeeper on the stage insisting that
they keep to stringent time limits and behave like human beings?
John Donvan of ABC News, moderator of public broadcasting's excellent
Intelligence Squared US debates, has been making the media rounds
urging that the debate format be changed to Oxford rules - to formally
argue resolutions like "Resolved: The United States Should Withdraw
from
inwill pay no price for doing so.
which the candidates would make brief opening and closing statements
and in the time remaining question one another about the issue at
hand, under strict time guidelines At Change.org, 60,000 have signed a
petition urging this be done. You have to wonder what would happen if
those 60,000 and more turned up outside the first debate at Hofstra
University on Sept. 26, exercising their constitutional right of
assembly and demanding, not just urging, this better way.
Or why not put the League of Women Voters back in charge, with just
the two candidates and a ruthless timekeeper on the stage insisting
that they keep to stringent time limits and behave like human beings?
If they don't, on their heads be it. The timekeeper could even pull
the plug early if things got out of hand.
Which brings us to the #1 Question: How can anyone keep Trump in
bounds? He makes up the rules as he goes along. He is a pathological
liar and overweening narcissist who, as Josh Marshall at Talking
Points Memo reminds us in a chilling take on the man, has more than
once hinted at the murder of Hillary Clinton. Says the astute
Marshall:
"The salient fact about Trump isn't his cruelty or penchant for
aggression and violence. It's his inability to control urges and
drives most people gain control over very early in life. There are
plenty of sadists and sociopaths in the world. They're not remarkable.
The scariest have a high degree of impulse control (iciness) which
allows them to inflict pain on others when no one is looking or when
they
What is true with Trump is what every critic has been saying for a year:for a change.
the
most obvious and contrived provocation can goad this thin-skinned
charlatan into a wild outburst. He's a 70-year-old man with children
and grandchildren and he has no self-control."
Does anyone really believe a candidate so unstable can or will engage
in serious debate? And if our first line of defense against his
volcanic lies
-
journalists supposedly committed to truth - crumbles, how will we ever
clean up the contamination?
Something's got to give. We can't go on like this. We can no longer
leave the electoral process to the two parties or the media
conglomerates with whom they're in cahoots. The stakes are too high.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike
4.0 License.
Bill Moyers
Skip to main content
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There's No Debate
Published on
Monday, September 19, 2016
by
BillMoyers.com
There's No Debate
The candidates and the media have thoroughly corrupted the
presidential debates. Our democracy deserves better. There's still
time
bypower.
Bill Moyers, Michael Winship
. 9 Comments
.
. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump during primary debates. (Left:
Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg via Getty Images; Right: Geoff
Robins/AFP/Getty
Images)
. Let's call the whole thing off.
. Not the election, although if we only had a magic reset button we
could pretend this sorry spectacle never happened and start all over.
. No, we mean the presidential debates - which, if the present format
and moderators remain as they are, threaten an effect on democracy
more like Leopold and Loeb than Lincoln and Douglas.
. The official presidential debates coming up are dominated by the
candidates and the media, and therein lurk both the problems and the
reasons to scrap this fraudulent nonsense for something sane and
serious.
We had a humiliating sneak preview Sept. 7, when NBC's celebrity
interviewer Matt Lauer hosted a one-hour "Commander-in-Chief Forum" in
which Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump spoke with Lauer from the same
stage but in separate interviews. The event was supposed to be about
defense and veterans issues, yet to everyone's bewilderment (except
the Trump camp, which must have been cheering out of camera range that
Lauer was playing their song), Lauer seemed to think Clinton's emails
were worthy of more questions than, say, nuclear war, global warming
or the fate of Syrian refugees.
Of course, that wasn't a debate per se but neither are the sideshows
that we call the official debates, even though the rules put in place
by the nonprofit Commission on Presidential Debates are meant to
insure a certain amount of fairness and decorum - unlike the
trainwreck of "debates" during the primary season, which were run
solely by the parties and media sponsors with no adult supervision.
But despite the efforts of the commission, the official presidential
debates coming up also are dominated by the candidates and the media,
and therein lurk both the problems and the reasons to scrap this
fraudulent nonsense for something sane and serious.
A little history: From 1976, when President Gerald Ford faced off
against Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter, the three presidential debates and
one vice presidential debate were administered by the League of Women
Voters, which did an admirable job under trying circumstances. But
then, as historian Jill Lepore writes in an excellent New Yorker
article on the history of presidential debates, the Reagan White House
wanted to wrest control from the League and give it to the networks.
According to Lepore:
"During Senate hearings, Dorothy Ridings, the president of the League
of Women Voters, warned against that move: 'Broadcasters are
profit-making corporations operating in an extremely competitive
setting, in which ratings assume utmost importance.' They would make a
travesty of the debates, she predicted, not least because they'd agree
to whatever terms the campaigns demanded. Also: 'We firmly believe
that those who report the news should not make the news.'"
Ridings' prescience proved correct and then some. In 1988, the League
pulled out of the Bush-Dukakis debates, declaring in a press release,
"It has become clear to us that the candidates' organizations aim to
add debates to their list of campaign-trail charades devoid of
substance, spontaneity and answers to tough questions. The League has
no intention of becoming an accessory to the hoodwinking of the
American public."
The giant media conglomerates - NBCUniversal (Comcast), Disney, CBS
Corp., 21st Century Fox, Time Warner - have turned the campaign and
the upcoming debates into profit centers that reap a huge return from
political trivia and titillation.
Walter Cronkite agreed. That same year, he wrote, "The debates are
part of the unconscionable fraud that our political campaigns have
become. Here is a means to present to the American people a rational
exposition of the major issues that face the nation, and the alternate
approaches to their solution.
Yet the candidates participate only with the guarantee of a format
that defies meaningful discourse. They should be charged with
sabotaging the electoral process."
But as Ridings said, it's not just the candidates involved in this
criminal hijacking of discourse. The giant media conglomerates -
NBCUniversal (Comcast), Disney, CBS Corp., 21st Century Fox, Time
Warner - have turned the campaign and the upcoming debates into profit
centers that reap a huge return from political trivia and titillation.
A game show, if you will - a farcical theater of make-believe rigged
by the two parties and the networks to maintain their cartel of money
and
"Debating," Jill Lepore writes, "like voting, is a way for people tolegislatures.
disagree without hitting one another or going to war: it's the key to
every institution that makes civic life possible, from courts to
Without debate, there can be no self-government." But the mediathat fears no rebuttal.
monoliths have taken the democratic purpose of a televised debate - to
inform the public on the issues and the candidates' positions on them
- and reduced it to a mock duel between the journalists who serve as
moderators - too often surrendering their allegedly inquiring minds -
and candidates who know they can simply blow past the questions with
lies that go unchallenged, evasions that fear no rebuke and
demagoguery
Remember that it was CBS CEO Leslie Moonves who whooped about the cashNATO,"
to be made from the campaign, telling an investors conference in
February, "The money's rolling in and this is fun. I've never seen
anything like this, and this going to be a very good year for us.
Bring it on, Donald. Keep going.
Donald's place in this election is a good thing." Oh, yes, good for
Moonves'
annual bonus, but good for democracy? Don't make us laugh. Elaine
Quijano of CBS News will be moderating the vice presidential
candidates' debate on Oct.
4, with Moonves looking over her shoulder.
Remember, too, that both Lauer and Trump are NBCUniversal celebrities
who have earned millions from and for the networks. (Vanity Fair
magazine even reported that NBCUniversal boss Steve Burke had spoken
hypothetically with Trump about continuing The Apprentice from the
White House.) Moderating the first presidential debate on Sept. 26 is
NBC anchorman Lester Holt, a nice and competent fellow, but facing the
same pressure as his fellow teammate Matt Lauer to not offend their
once-and-possibly-future NBC star Donald Trump.
And remember that Anderson Cooper of Time-Warner's CNN, the
all-Trump-all-the-time network, and Martha Raddatz of Disney's ABC
News will anchor the second presidential debate (to her credit,
Raddatz did a good job during the 2012 vice presidential debate) - and
that the final, crucial close encounter between Trump and Clinton will
be moderated by Chris Wallace of Fox, the very "news organization"
that joined with Donald Trump to gleefully spread the Big Lie of
Birtherism that served Trump so well with free publicity (and Fox so
well with ratings) and that Trump now conveniently and hypocritically
repents.
We wait breathlessly to see if during that debate Wallace inquires of
Trump:
"Did you really believe that lying about Barack Obama's birth was good
for the country?" And: "What is your source for saying Hillary Clinton
started the rumor that Obama was not born in America?" And: "How do we
know you won't change your mind again and raise further doubts about
whether the president is an American?" And - to pick up on a
suggestion from The Washington Post's David Fahrenthold, who has been
reporting on Trump's charitable giving - or lack thereof: "Mr. Trump,
will you now follow through on your promise to donate $5 million to
charity once you were given proof that President Obama was born in the
United States? What charity do you have in mind? One of your own,
perhaps?"
Wallace has already admitted he is in no position to hold Trump
accountable for the lies he tells in the "debate" - that "it's not my
job" to fact check either Trump or Clinton during the course of their
appearance with him.
That
should be pleasing to Roger Ailes, who was fired as head of the Fox
News empire for scandalous sexist behavior but who is now giving Trump
debate tips. Wallace is on record saying how much he admired and loved
Ailes, to whom he owes his stardom at Fox - "The best boss I've had in
almost a half a century in journalism," Wallace said.
Such conflicts of interest at the core of the debates reminds us of
what Woody Allen said back in one of his earlier, funnier films - that
the whole thing is a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a
travesty of two mockeries of a sham. And why are we so complacent
about the hijacking of our political process - that it has descended
to this level where the two parties and the media giants pick as the
only surrogates of the American people the minions of an oligarchic
media riddled with cronyism and conflicts of interest?
So yes, scrap the debates as they are and rebuild. Even with a few
days left until the first one there's time to call everyone together,
announce that our democracy deserves better and change the rules.
Why not put the League of Women Voters back in charge, with just the
two candidates and a ruthless timekeeper on the stage insisting that
they keep to stringent time limits and behave like human beings?
John Donvan of ABC News, moderator of public broadcasting's excellent
Intelligence Squared US debates, has been making the media rounds
urging that the debate format be changed to Oxford rules - to formally
argue resolutions like "Resolved: The United States Should Withdraw
from
inwill pay no price for doing so.
which the candidates would make brief opening and closing statements
and in the time remaining question one another about the issue at
hand, under strict time guidelines At Change.org, 60,000 have signed a
petition urging this be done. You have to wonder what would happen if
those 60,000 and more turned up outside the first debate at Hofstra
University on Sept. 26, exercising their constitutional right of
assembly and demanding, not just urging, this better way.
Or why not put the League of Women Voters back in charge, with just
the two candidates and a ruthless timekeeper on the stage insisting
that they keep to stringent time limits and behave like human beings?
If they don't, on their heads be it. The timekeeper could even pull
the plug early if things got out of hand.
Which brings us to the #1 Question: How can anyone keep Trump in
bounds? He makes up the rules as he goes along. He is a pathological
liar and overweening narcissist who, as Josh Marshall at Talking
Points Memo reminds us in a chilling take on the man, has more than
once hinted at the murder of Hillary Clinton. Says the astute
Marshall:
"The salient fact about Trump isn't his cruelty or penchant for
aggression and violence. It's his inability to control urges and
drives most people gain control over very early in life. There are
plenty of sadists and sociopaths in the world. They're not remarkable.
The scariest have a high degree of impulse control (iciness) which
allows them to inflict pain on others when no one is looking or when
they
What is true with Trump is what every critic has been saying for a year:
the
most obvious and contrived provocation can goad this thin-skinned
charlatan into a wild outburst. He's a 70-year-old man with children
and grandchildren and he has no self-control."
Does anyone really believe a candidate so unstable can or will engage
in serious debate? And if our first line of defense against his
volcanic lies
-
journalists supposedly committed to truth - crumbles, how will we ever
clean up the contamination?
Something's got to give. We can't go on like this. We can no longer
leave the electoral process to the two parties or the media
conglomerates with whom they're in cahoots. The stakes are too high.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike
4.0 License.
/author/bill-moyers
http://www.commondreams.org/author/bill-moyers
