The Next President Is Dead

Well, his campaign is anyway.

Chris Dodd, the only candidate who had any semblance of true presidential bearing has dropped out of the running along with Joe Biden. While Biden really never had a chance, he was certainly more honest than most of the remaining field, but Dodd impressed me every time he spoke. No bull, just the facts and a straightforward way of speaking. And all it took to derail these two campaign trains was the Iowa Caucus. Ten percent of the eligible voters of a state which is primarily agricultural in nature and has an incredible majority of white voters. I guess that's why they call them "Caucuses." (For the slow witted, I'm referring to the fact that white people are classified as caucasians.)

Dodd was never viewed as a warm and fuzzy candidate by the Big News Media and therefore only made the evening news on the day he dropped out of the race. One more loss for American Democracy. As for the BNM itself, the FOX network has decided that America doesn't need to hear from Ron Paul in the next televised Republican debate. Even though Paul supposedly meets all criteria to appear, his views don't match up with FOX's "Fair And Balanced" ideals of Republicanism. In the Tit-For-Tat Department, ABC has decided to bounce Dennis Kucinich from it's Democratic debate. Both networks refuse to discuss why they exclude candidates, but the longstanding chestnut that "a line must be drawn somewhere" always surfaces. This essentially means that there are so many candidates, in order for everyone to have time to air their views, some of them must be excluded. Does this make any sense? Try this: In order for the candidates whose views closely resemble those of our board of directors to be heard, we're excluding the guys we just don't like.

With so many candidates on both sides it can indeed be a challenge to carve out a block of time long enough for everyone to speak, let alone hold the public interest, but the exclusion game is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Networks cite small polling numbers for certain candidates so they cut them from the debates. The next day, those same excluded candidates poll numbers shrink even more and the networks can keep them out of the next debate, and so on, ad infinitum. Now if you pay attention to trivial things like presidential elections you might know all the players well enough to make an educated choice, but for the passive sector of our nation, the ones who choose a president by evening news sound bites, all they're ever going to see is the top three front-runners from either side and invariably, those will be the candidates who speak the loudest yet say the least. It's an incredibly complex form of pandering in which a candidate makes broad statements designed to pacify and entertain the largest block of voters possible. Call it anti-pandering if you will, and when Noah Webster rises from his grave and adds it to his Unabridged Dictionary make sure you get my name right as the originator of the term.

Sorry. I digressed. Where the hell was I? Oh yes, exclusion.

So while the top tier of candidates is continually shown on the evening news and featured prominently at center stage in the debates, the bottom tier rarely gets news time and is excluded from the debates one by one and the gap in the poll numbers continues to widen. Next thing you know, your ability to vote for the candidate of your choice is defined by only two candidates, neither of which is willing or able to make a clear statement on any issue other than love of family and how terrible it would be for their opponent to win. Some process, huh?

This is all part of how the two-party system is killing America and the BNM is doing all it can to ensure that the power stays in the hands of the powerful. Don't believe me? Next time you hear a candidate speaking, count the number of times they say "for the American People" and compare it to how often they say "for the Democratic/Republican Party" and you'll get a pretty good idea where their interests really lie. And speaking of lies... well, we won't get into that here. It's just too easy.

PDC To Big Easy: Fuck Off!

Once again New Orleans has been told, in no uncertain terms, to fuck off and die. This time by Paul Kirk (D) from the bi-partisan Presidential Debate Commission. Instead, Oxford, Mississippi will host the presidential hopefuls. Mr Kirk informed locals of the reasons our city was deemed unacceptable:

1 New Orleans is not technologically up to date.

Really? It seems to me you need some cameras and an internet connection. Is the commission saying that we don't have this? Or are they saying that we're too stupid to work the equipment? I seem to remember a few weeks after the storm when the President of these United States spouted heartfelt lies to us from Jackson Square. We had little to no power and even less people but that message got through. And we have no trouble beaming Saints games across the globe. Surely there must be another reason.

2 New Orleans does not have the hotel space needed for a major convention.

Really? We have enough rooms to hold the million plus visitors that came to Mardi Gras earlier this year. Ask the three or four major medical convention attendees that have visited us this year. And we seem to have plenty of space for the BCS Championship and NBA All-Star games, both of which are sure to draw ten times the crowd that a Presidential debate will. In fact, New Orleans can boast at least five times the hotel space needed for the debate, unlike Oxford, MS, which has only about half of the required rooms, forcing most people to seek accommodations in outlying areas.

3 New Orleans does not have a venue sufficient to host the debate.

Really? Well, of course the Saenger, the State Palace and the Municipal Auditorium are still somewhat in a state of flux, but we have the Superdome and the newly refurbished Morial Convention Center. But surely, to hold a Presidential Debate in either of those would just remind the Nation of the current administrations miserable failures during Hurricane Katrina. Surely the endless accusations and questions of the locals would be enough to dislodge even the hardiest hairdo of John Edwards no matter how much of his campaign money he spent on it.

Wait! I think that's it! It's clear that even though half of the combined Republican and Democratic candidates have made it clear that New Orleans should host a debate, no-one actually wants to because of the embarrassment factor. Neither party wants to be associated with the stigma of the worst Federal failure since the Hoover administration, nor do they want to be the party whose candidates are unable to explain why they are unable to help us out of the mess we're in. Can you blame them? Another possibility is that none of the candidates want to sit through the required photo opportunities with the ineffective governor, the absentee mayor or any number of the city and state officials with federal indictments hanging over their heads.

This is simply "safe" politics at its finest. Pick a town close enough to ground zero that says "We acknowledge the problem," but far enough away so that your candidates don't walk away with the stink of failure on them. Smooth move Paul. Apparently you did something to piss off your co-workers that they voted you the bearer of this bad news. In that same vein, I elect you to go back to your small minded little committee and inform them that they have all been admitted to a podium of honor here in the Nation Of Morons.

Thanks for nothing.