Friday, March 16, 2007

From My Mailbox (which I should check more often)

Nevada Up North sends this:

Petition for a Western "Frontier" Debate click to sign the petition.

This petition encourages the Nevada Democratic Party to find partners for a "Frontier" Presidential Primary Debate to replace the successfully defeated Fox News debate.

A "Frontier" Debate is defined as: Partnering with online sponsors such as but not limited to PoliticsTV and YouTube to broadcast a debate over the internet. That the contract of such a debate allows it to remain in the public domain and that a special emphasis be placed on highlighting the "Frontier" of American politics using technology.

I had expressed my doubts about the effectiveness of such a debate at least as far as the rural and western vote is concerned however....I'm not opposed to it if there is enough interest from wherever it comes. You decide.

5 comments:

TomCat said...

This is off-topic, just a tad, but the government gives the big three TV networks rights bandwidth in the electromagnetic spectrum in return for supposedly serving the public interest. Shouldn't at least one of the networks be required to cover each debate?

Not Your Mama said...

I've had much the same thought and yes, I do think they should be obligated to do so.

What's more in the public interest than knowing where candidates stand on issues???

Women on the Verge said...

No need to worry... Dubya will tell us what's in our best interest :-{

E

cls said...

I really hate online petitions. First of all, if these petitioners want a debate, then maybe they should step away from their keyboards and put one together. Otherwise, this is just so much noise looking like action but getting absolutely nothing done. Typically, the petition is for someone else to do the heavy lifting:

This petition encourages the Nevada Democratic Party to find partners for a "Frontier" Presidential Primary Debate to replace the successfully defeated Fox News debate.

A "Frontier" Debate is defined as:

Partnering with online sponsors such as but not limited to PoliticsTV and YouTube to broadcast a debate over the internet. That the contract of such a debate allows it to remain in the public domain and that a special emphasis be placed on highlighting the "Frontier" of American politics using technology.


For those who don't have the bandwidth (or possibly even internet at all) to stream or download an hour and a half debate, just who will see this debate? Unless there is a large audience representing a decent cross-section of the population, the top-tier candidates will not attend.

Not Your Mama said...

True enough, I don't think it would reach the intended audience or that the candidates will be interested for much the same reasons you stated.

Just trying to be fair and put it out there in case others felt differently ;).