This is going to be a commercial for democratic cantidates. If the Huffington Post will be involved, expect nothing less than pandering to the farthest-left cantidate of the day with softball questions and worshipful prostration.
Also expect straw-man questions, tongue-in-cheek vitriol and snide comments for the conservative cantidates.
So let me get this straight... the dems walk out on a debate hosted by Fox News, citing bias... but they see no problem with bias in a debate hosted in part by the Huffington Post?
Are you freakin' kidding me?

Did you even read the article?

The Huffington Post is only one of the three sites hosting the debate. Also, and most importantly, the people reading the debates are the ones who ask the questions, not the sites themselves.

How am I expected to believe that it will actually be the candidate and that it is not one of their staffers that is trained to answer based off of a predispositioned template?

Furthermore, do you really think that the tough questions will get answered or do you think the screeners will kill some questions right off the bat?

This is the same idea as a virtual town hall meeting in a teleconference type setting. Sure the candidate will be speaking and answering in their own voice but, the screeners will keep the hard questions that need real answers away so they can give fluff ball whitewashed non informative feel good answers like the same non-beneficial feel good legislation these bums keep passing up on the hill.

Nice concept but the idea falls apart when you expect a certain level of candidness and honesty in an open forum. All politicians do it and Democrat candidates especially are bad about this. They pre-screen their events and the questions that are allowed to be asked so they dont get a stumper that makes them look incompetent.

well no matter how you look at it it is a step in the right direction to have the ability to involve many times more people than an inhouse debate. We shall see how this goes, i hope you are wrong george because i have a few questins id like to ask candidates myself

Hey George, you're using the typical Rovian tactic of applying to the left what the right has actually been up to for years. A quick google search reveals a plethora of news articles relating to G.W. keeping all of his campaign events screened. Here's a link to just one of them.

Any rational observer knows that the Democratic party is the big-tent party of ideas. The Democratic party has some politicians that are pro-life, some that are pro-choice, some that are pro-gun and others that are pro-gun control. Just take a look at Howard Dean's record on guns when he was Governor of Vermont. Or new PA Senator Bob Casey's record on abortion. The Democrats also currently have more veterans serving in office than Republicans. So your argument falls flat on it's face. The Republican party, on the other hand, has been taken over by religious extremists who do not tolerate any deviance from the party line, and demand obeiance to a single-head, in much the same fashion as Augustus Caesar expected full obedience from his senate.

Now ask yourself which party better represents "democracy" and which better represents the failed model of the Roman "republic."

I know. It's difficult to keep believing when facts disagree with you. Don't worry. There's a place in the Democratic party, even for you.

Atticus Dove
http://hawkeanddove.com

The Huffington Post I hope will not show any unfair bias towards the Republican talking points.

Atticus,

*sigh* Ok first off what bothers me is how when someone has a critique regarding one party they are automatically affiliated with the opposition and have those labels pinned to their reputation.

I never said that the other side was not just as guilty. I just happened to have heard of instances of this more so from the left than I have heard of from the right. I happen to support a lot of the beliefs that you have stated regarding the Republican Party. They have been infiltrated with religious extremists just as much as communists, socialists, and eco-religious nuts have infiltrated the Democrat party.

You say my argument falls flat on it's face by coming touting how great your guys are but you still do not focus on the fact that I said ALL politicians are guilty of screening not just your guys. I repeat, I have heard of instances of this more so from the left than I have heard of from the right.

"Now ask yourself which party better represents "democracy" and which better represents the failed model of the Roman "republic."" True the Roman republic failed due to many reasons but I think the biggest of all which is a huge problem today and draws a shocking parallel, complacency. Freedom is not only a right it is a privilege and a responsibility. If you do not hold your politicians to task, who will? Jefferson summed it up with this:
“When the government fears the people, that is liberty; when the people fear the government, that is tyranny.”

We only gave the Republic idea a good 137 years before the Democrats screwed it up and turned it into a full-blown behemoth federalized democracy. See the year 1913, look it up, 16th & 17th amendments, "Federal" Reserve Act (interesting that the dems are against privatization of social security yet they privatized the entire right of our government to mint and coin money to a banking cartel) and the list goes on.

Look, I hate to be the one to break it to you but the idea of democracy is dieing in this country. The idea of the republic is long gone. We are only one terrorist attack away from martial law and a dictatorship of some sort. Look at the “rules” that are to be followed if we ever hit “Red” on the DHS threat assessment thermometer. The passage of the patriot act, military commission act, re-writing of the insurrection act, no knock warrants, wire tapping, the list goes on. The whole Left-Right struggle being televised and printed in the media with their individual stances on the issue is a show. It is another example of the entertainment that Americans eat up on a daily basis and is designed to keep us all blinded to what the elite’s are really trying to do up on the hill. If you don’t believe it name one politician who is really a representative of “the people”, who didn’t have a multi-million campaign to get into office. When no one can get into the ball game to be a representative due to the high cost of running how will you ever have honest representation for the average person. Answer: you don’t. The big money supporters who back the candidates are expecting something for their money, unless the basic laws of greed have changed in the passed 300 years.

For some reason the idea of “public service” and “elected office” became a right of passage and a status symbol rather than a duty to country. Look at the career politicians on the hill. People don’t look at the simple facts. We have tireless debate about the same issues for 20-30 years and never accomplish anything because it is the same people who have been in office for 20-30 years towing party lines. Patriots and Statesman aren’t wanted anymore, the mob keeps voting in panderers and political correctness zombies who exploit sub-classes in our culture to buy votes and keep themselves in their comfy little seat of nobility.

Both parties play a part and if you look at who has the money and who owns what you will find whom truly are in control of this nation. The rest is just fanciful entertainment of which by the looks of your blog you play just as much a part of.

George, the American circuis revolves not around a left-right struggle but around a Democratic-Republican struggle. I think one of the main problems in this country is that those in power try to make the entire left-right struggle look like it is only about the pointless Democratic-Republican power struggle so that all people do is complain without realizing there are those organizing to fight the problems within America. All the other problems you mentioned are rightwing, from the suppression of our basic rights to rule by the wealthy and the corporations. Your arguments from your last two posts sound almost exactly like those of a leftist (and I mean a real leftist, not a Democrat). Eventually, I hope that someday, you and others like you who are just one step short of seeing the big picutre, will realize that we on the left, feel the same way you do and that you will help us stand up to the elites that are trying to control America. What the left-right division is really about is control by the people on the left and control by the few on the right. Not some whinefest between two corrupt political parties.