Thanks for the thread, KamaAina.

The League of Women Voters sponsored debates until 1987. Then the parties took over, and We the People lost.

http://lwv.org/content/league-women-voters-and-candidate-debates-changing-relationship

This is wrong on so many levels.

Thanks for the info.

channels for which one needs to pay a monthly fee.

Just in case will add ...



and also how far we have fallen as a nation, everything is for sale.

it goes right over my head. What's the setup to this punchline?

she is very rich

That goon helped ruin this nation thanks to his "both parties are the same" schtick in 2000. And he's a terrible misogynist.

So at least it was available for free to anyone with internet. (Well, maybe not dial-up.)

or even a computer. What they do have is votes. And we need for them to use them!!

for older folks that don't have either.They will get passed around to more than 20.

I don't have cable and I watched it on my phone live through the cnn app

Big Kudos to CNN for offering that because Fox does not

And anyone with a wifi enabled device could find a free public wifi and watch it like that too. DC government has offered public wifi hotspots in various locations around the city. My tax dollars at work.

Not sure why the visuals are needed.

Can't find the thread for some reason.

television and it is the televised them that people are voting for.

We were able to find a link on their site which was viewable quite nicely just using the browser of our choice (chrome on android.)

I don't really trust any for-profit media enterprise to be fair and balanced. Maybe, 30 years ago, CBS - but probably not.

The electioneering and paid-political-advertisements need to go into the dustbin.

- Twelve months before the election, everyone that is interested can file position papers along with a bit of cash to pay for the process.

- Six months prior each candidate needs to show a roster of qualified voters at some reasonable number (100,000?)

- Every month thereafter, before the election, each candidate can update their position online and charge/refute other candidates - in writing. It will be possible to compare stated positions over the whole period.

- T.V. and other commercial media would be limited to reporting on the most recent stated positions of each candidate. If they want to editorialize/pontificate than this will need to be done under the banner of the publications owners' identification.

no matter what the media did or said. As Lincoln said " you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink"

Now you've got my attention. I am a disability rights advocate who has been working for quite some time to RAMP UP! The Disability Vote.

http://disabilityorganizing.net/voting/

I will be sure to run this by my Deaf and hard of hearing friends.

Did you test to see if it worked on other channels? (i.e. could it be your cable company's fault rather than CNN's?)

On every streaming link I found on the internet. No CC on any of them. They were all just broadcasting CNN's program. They did not have CC on.

I finally got my problem fixed and got to listen to the last hour of the debate. On-line, as I don't even have a TV. But, even if I'd had a TV, I'd never pay for cable.

I read that as the broadcast CC having failed.

Pay TV or internet required to watch (it was also broadcast on the Westwood One radio network).
Setting: A casino in Las Vegas.
Pre-game show: National Anthem by Sheryl Crow.
Time: Tuesday evening.

It's truly vulgar the gyrations DWS went through to keep this debate as unapproachable as possible for the less fortunate among us. If this were a boxing match or a WWF event maybe all that's OK, but a Presidential debate? She must be replaced.

...in every state, half the states with NO AUDIT AT ALL (comparison of ballots to electronic totals), and the other half with a miserably inadequate 1% audit, all run on 'TRADE SECRET' programming code--code that the public is forbidden to review--'owned' by far, far rightwing-connected, PRIVATE corporations, the worst being ES&S (which bought out Diebold). Even the few states that have mail-in ballots, put the ballots into 'TRADE SECRET' code scanner systems, and 99% of the actual ballots are never seen again.

There are many things that un-elected, far right state legislators and governors have done to limit voting by the poor and especially by racial minorities, and to gerrymander districts in favor of the far right. But they wouldn't have the power to do these things if they had not been 'Diebolded' into office.

Our system is WIDE OPEN to this kind of election fraud: 'TRADE SECRET' code!

There are many things that Corporate 'news' monopolies have done to destroy public debate and democracy itself. These would not be possible if sensible laws were in place, to publicly fund elections, and to publicly fund true PUBLIC media (public TV & radio, now run by corporations and full of ads!, and internet access--the latter by guaranteeing every citizen a computer and computer training), and reinstitution of certain provisions of the old Fairness Doctrine (which not only required fairness in PRIVATE broadcast media on political issues, but strongly influenced print media to be fair--giving equal time, etc.).

This latest corporate bullshit of restricting access to our presidential debates is just more of the same. It all started with the demise of the Fairness Doctrine under Reagan.

But we are never, never going to have these and other no-brainer democratic guarantees while our public officers--the leaders to whom we trust part of our sovereignty as a people--are S/elected by private corporations, not to mention far, FAR rightwing-connected private corporations!

That is what is happening. And I dread to think what is going to happen, once the primary and general elections actually begin. The rigged media, and the rigged pre-election polls, are bad enough. The rigged Exit Polls (rigged to match the 'TRADE SECRET' code results) are bad enough. The SuperPacs are bad enough. Citizens United is bad enough. The gutting of the Voting Rights Act is bad enough. Gerrymandering is bad enough. Non-stop Corporate propaganda, day in, day out, on both commercial and so-called public media, is bad enough. The EASY rigging of the vote count is the FINAL bar that has been put up to prevent serious reform.

'TRADE SECRET' code makes the rigging of everything else so much easier!

on the basic or expanded basic level of service (and the basic service generally doesn't cost "a lot".

my phone, internet, and cable TV package, and I don't get either channel. In fact, I need to find time to call and cancel my TV package, but I have been too busy and keep forgetting.

Yeah, if you have a computer, you can find a free live streaming event, but not everyone has a computer...and while most people who have TV's today, do subscribe to some paid channels for movies and stuff, not all do. Presidential debates need to be free and available to all. Period.

More and more people are dropping it. Young people especially. At least in my building. They are furious at cable companies.

And I don't have cable either—just not worth what it delivers.

I watched on-line—but again, I knew how to do that. Not everyone would.

That bothered me a lot. A lot. I blame DWS. But also Bernie and Martin should have made a stink about it weeks before. Especially given the small number of debates. Reuters is saying that the majority of Democrats as well as the majority of the country didn't even know there was a Democartic debate.

So, not only was it behind a pay-wall, it was on a cable station that doesn't have the highest ratings. You could watch on line—if you knew how to find the link and if you had a computer. Even these things are out of reach for lots of people. Old people, poor people, immigrants.

Said I didn't have the newest flash player but my phone won't update the flash.

And no am or fm station had the audio.

that no-one bothers to watch is just not worth the outrageous cost involved, and just use the Internet for everything.

And I understand the closed captioning wasn't working on CNN's stream.