{"id":406,"date":"2004-03-20T03:32:13","date_gmt":"2004-03-20T07:32:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/wordpress\/?p=406"},"modified":"2004-03-20T03:32:13","modified_gmt":"2004-03-20T07:32:13","slug":"bush-kerry-to-spend-almost-half-billion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=406","title":{"rendered":"Bush, Kerry to Spend Almost Half-Billion"},"content":{"rendered":"

Is there any good or decent reason why, especially during times of financial hardships and security perils, these men need to spend a half-billion dollars <\/a>spreading lies and misinformation about one another?<\/p>\n

It’s obscene.<\/p>\n

It’s been suggested countless times. Why not<\/i> demand at least a monthly forum for debate, provided free of charge to the candidates, accessible over the major network, cable and radio stations?<\/p>\n

Since it will never be considered I’ll be even more preposterous.<\/p>\n

Involve the electorate. What about giving priority to questions accompanied with a receipt of even a nominal contribution to a charity that actually does someone good or promotes democracy in some way, for instance, buying the equipment that would provide a paper trail on electronic voting machines since this gov’t can’t seem to find money for them. We all know that our ‘leaders’ are being chosen by an elite<\/a> few and ‘campaign reform’ is nothing but a challenge the status quo<\/a> has little difficulty circumventing<\/a>. But why do we tolerate it<\/a>?<\/p>\n

The debates could be held in different cities or towns each time. Imagine what that would do for the local tourist industries. If the cost<\/a> of security makes this impossible so be it; hole them up in Cheney’s fortified bunker and air the debates from it. Dick<\/a> could use that time to check-up on Halliburton’s offshore accounts<\/a> and count<\/a> his profits.<\/p>\n

That years into this war on terror\/blood for oil<\/a> campaign the presidential candidates are significantly less able to freely roam this country should be reason enough to tell them all to take a hike. Exponentially the priorities of these candidates and their employees are so dangerously perverted they threaten to seriously, perhaps irreparably, undermine what little democracy we have left.<\/p>\n

Richard Reeves observes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

C-Span released a poll taken for its 25th anniversary indicating that American cable-television watchers, presumably more politically aware than nonviewers, felt that they really had very little to do with the political process, a system they saw dominated by large corporations and big political contributors. The Washington Post headline on that one was: “Most Americans Feel They’re on the Sidelines of Political Process <\/a>…”<\/div>\n

Reeves, and others, are speculating that months of trash talk will likely lead to low voter turnouts.<\/p>\n

Somehow I don’t expect much dissent from an American public weaned on crass<\/a> rhetoric and polluted streams<\/a>, beaten<\/a> into complacency by well-heeled thugs<\/a>, overmedicated to incapacitation behind the wheel of democracy, dozily wondering if they still are, too addicted to brave a day without the drugs. As I said, obscene.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Is there any good or decent reason why, especially during times of financial hardships and security perils, these men need to spend a half-billion dollars spreading lies and misinformation about one another? It’s obscene. It’s been suggested countless times. Why … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdXTf-6y","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=406"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}