Expanding the Debate: Second Presidential Debate

From democracynow.org: President Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney sparred last night in their second of three debates. Today, in a two-hour special, we expand the debate by including the voices of three presidential candidates shut out of the official debate. We are joined by Jill Stein of the Green Party, Constitution Party nominee Virgil Goode, and Justice Party candidate Rocky Anderson. We re-air parts of last night’s presidential debate, pausing the videotape to give third-party candidates a chance to respond to the same questions put to the major-party candidates. See at democracynow.org

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Upcoming Events You Don't Want to Miss, Including Expanded VP Debate

You might think the Vice-Presidential debate concludes tonight. If you do, you’re mistaken. Democracy Now! is presenting the first Vice-Presidential Expanded Debate Friday morning (8-9AM EDT) and HuffPost Live will air a conversation between Third Party Vice-Presidential Candidates late Friday morning (11:30-noon EDT).

Luis Rodriguez (Justice Party) and Cheri Honkala (Green Party) will be responding to the same questions tomorrow morning on Democracy Now! that Joe Biden and Paul Ryan are responding to tonight.

Following that, Rodriguez will be joined in the HuffPost Live discussion by Judge Jim Gray (Libertarian) and Ken Cross (Reform).

Luis Rodriguez, a leading Chicano writer, speaker, gang expert and interventionist, and activist for justice in urban peace, the arts, labor, and human rights, is the 2012 Justice Party VP nominee.

At just eleven, after his family resettled in the San Gabriel Valley, Luis joined his first street-gang. During the 60’s and early 70’s he was an active gang member -- but he also began his work as a community organizer and major Chicano activist, participating in the Chicano Movement, the 1968 East L.A. walkouts, and the August 31, 1970 Chicano Moratorium against the Vietnam War. Facing a jail sentence for a criminal conviction, members of his community sent letters of support. In turn, Rodriguez quit drugs and the gang life, and dedicated his life to his people and their community. 

By 1980 Rodriguez had become a writer, publishing ChrismeArte, a Chicano art journal, and has since become a leading figure in contemporary Chicano literature. He has fifteen published books in poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and children's literature, including the bestselling 1993 memoir Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A. and its 2011 sequel, It Calls You Back: An Odyssey Through Love, Addiction, Revolutions, and Healing. After a life of working as an expert in gang intervention to keep young people out of gangs, Luis J. Rodriguez is running for the office of Vice-President of the United States, sharing the Justice Party ticket with former Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson.

Unlike most Vice-Presidential candidates, Luis is not a lawyer, a Congressman, or a millionaire. He came from the streets and lived the life many impoverished minority young people live. He knows first hand what it is like to be a teenager with no hope. He also knows what it is like to beat the odds and succeed in the world of literature. He has been an inspiration to thousands of young Latinos and all Americans can use a dose of inspiration from Luis.

Upcoming events you don't want to miss:

• Friday, October 12. 8–9 a.m. EDT: Democracy Now's "Expanding the Debate" series continues, airing highlights from the "official" vice presidential debate with Joe Biden and Paul Ryan, with pauses to get responses from Green Party vice presidential nominee Cheri Honkala and Justice Party vice presidential nominee Luis Rodriguez.
   
• Friday, October 12. 11:30-12 EDT: Huffpost Live: "Conversation Between Third-Party VP Candidates," featuring Justice Party Nominee Luis Rodriguez, Libertarian Nominee Judge Jim Gray, and Reform Party Nominee Ken Cross. Watch live or at any time after online at live.huffingtonpost.com.

• Wednesday, October 17. 8–9 a.m. EDT: Democracy Now's "Expanding the Debate" series continues with highlights from the second presidential debate. Green Party nominee Jill Stein and Justice Party nominee Rocky Anderson will join Democracy Now! live on the show to offer responses to the same questions asked to President Obama and Mitt Romney.

• Wednesday, October 17. 12-2 p.m. EDT: HuffPost Live, "Conversation Between Third Party Presidential Candidates." Watch at live.huffingtonpost.com

• Monday, October 22. Time TBA: We continue our "Expanding the Debate" series with a live broadcast during the third presidential debate with real-time responses from Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein and Justice Party nominee Rocky Anderson.
  
  
• Tuesday, October 23. 9 PM EDT: 2012 Free & Equal Presidential Debate in Chicago. Rocky joins Gary Johnson, Jill Stein, and Virgil Goode to debate. Watch online at http://freeandequal.org (and other stations TBA).

Last week: Breaking into national (and international!) media

Democracy Now! broke the sound barrier by including candidates Rocky Anderson of the Justice Party and Jill Stein of the Green Party in the presidential debate. Stein and Anderson joined Democracy Now! for a live special just miles away from the Obama-Romney contest at the University of Denver. 

Rocky took on the real issues

On the imperial presidency:

"This race is also about whether our nation will continue down the road toward totalitarianism with an imperial presidency that has been made so much worse under both the Bush and the Obama administrations, which have shown utter contempt for the rule of law, due process, and the restrictions under the War Powers Clause of the United State Constitution."

 On jobs and trade:

"President Obama would like us to ignore what happened in the past four years. During the last 43 months we have had more than 8% unemployment. It is the only time in this nation’s history that we have had a president that has presided for more than three years of over 8% unemployment."

 "We need to renegotiate the outrageous free trade agreements and make sure they are fair trade so that we’re not discriminating against those employers who want to hire United States workers."

 On healthcare:

“We’re talking here about Obamacare and Romneycare. I would call it Insurance CompanyCare because they’re the ones who wrote it. They joined up with a very conservative foundation years ago to develop this plan, to make the American people buy this perverse product."

"The solution to Medicare is to provide Medicare for everybody. To make it a single payer system."

See a real debate on the role of government in protecting the American people. Rocky Anderson vs Gary Johnson.

Rocky is persuasively representing our views on the campaign trail. And he's doing it with dignity. Let's support him and do all we can to bring about real change. 

Keep the debate alive -- Donate today.

 

HuffPost Third Party Debates

(10/17) Second debate videos by topic:

• Huffpost OtherVoices: Jobs & Guns

• Huffpost OtherVoices: Immigration

• Huffpost OtherVoices: Outsourcing

(10/4) First debate videos by topic:

• HuffPost OtherVoices: Economy
  
  
• HuffPost OtherVoices: Healthcare

• HuffPost OtherVoices: Governing

Rocky on RT International

US Presidential Candidate Rocky Anderson on RT International October 4, 2012, the day of the first presidential debate in Denver, CO.

Expanding the Debate: Debate Coverage of First Presidential Debate with Rocky Anderson & Jill Stein

DemocracyNow.org - As President Obama and Mitt Romney squared off for the first time on Wednesday night, Democracy Now! broke the sound barrier by pausing Obama and Romney's answers to get real-time responses from candidates Jill Stein of the Green Party and Rocky Anderson of the Justice Party.

Stein and Anderson joined Democracy Now! for a live special just miles away from the Obama-Romney contest at the University of Denver. Many Obama supporters have expressed surprise that Romney was able to put the president on the defensive, while Obama failed to mention several of Romney's potential weak spots, including including his record at the private equity firm Bain Capital, his vast personal wealth and offshore investments, and his recent remark that 47 percent of Americans are government dependents.

Today, highlights from our "Expanding the Debate" special with the voices of all four candidates, showcasing the broadened perspectives on the critical issues beyond the Democratic-Republican political spectrum.

Where is your line drawn?

If a presidential candidate had embezzled government funds to pay off gambling debts to the Mafia . . . 

You do draw the line at times, don’t you?

For instance, if a presidential candidate had embezzled government funds to pay off gambling debts to the Mafia, that would be a deal-killer for you, right?  You’d refuse to vote for that candidate, wouldn’t you?

If a candidate lied repeatedly to the public about engaging in heroic deeds during a war and about receiving a Ph.D., you’d likely say there is just no way you could support such a candidate.  Right? 

Then why would you even consider voting for Barack Obama? 

He has engaged in horrific, unprecedented human and civil rights abuses, including:

• the targeting of U.S. citizens for assassination without any semblance of due process; 

• asserting the power to kidnap and imprison people anywhere, including U.S. citizens, for up to the rest of their lives, without charges, trial, legal assistance, or the right of habeas corpus; 

• overseeing the drone killings in at least four nations, which has entailed the murder of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of innocent men, women, and children.

He has cow-towed to his major donors on Wall Street, bringing into his administration the same people who led the charge for the de-regulation of the financial industry that caused the 2008 economic melt-down.  And he refuses to even suggest breaking up the banks considered too-big-to-fail, possibly setting us up for another economic melt-down. 

He contented himself with adopting healthcare legislation drafted by the insurance industry.  Obamacare (which should be called “InsuranceCompanyCare”) will result in enormous premium increases for the American people, while denying basic healthcare coverage to 30 million people.  Many of those people will suffer and die as a result.

If you can draw your line at embezzlement of government funds to pay off the Mafia and lying about war experiences and one’s academic record . . . will you also draw a moral line at assassinating U.S. citizens with no due process; imprisoning people for up to the rest of their lives without charges, trial, legal assistance, or the right of habeas corpus; and killing innocent men, women, and children in other nations while creating more hatred and hostility toward the United States?

People find all sorts of reasons for not drawing a personal moral line when it comes to supporting Barack Obama. 

They say it’s because he’s the lesser of two evils.

Or they say his Supreme Court appointments will be better than those who would be nominated by his main opponent.

Please consider these three compelling points (then pass them along):

1. Obama is not the lesser of two evils – he’s the more effective evil because he gets away with doing things with no Democratic opposition that, if done by a Republican president, would generate outrage nationwide, including from the Democratic Party. 

Imagine, for instance, if Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld were sitting around in the Oval Office deciding which suspected “militants” were to be killed in at least four other nations, knowing that hundreds of innocent civilians would be killed in the process. 

The Democrats would go nuts, with congressional subpoenas and hearings, demonstrations, and calls for impeachment.  However, simply because the president has a “D” on his jersey, many Democrats just complacently line up behind him. That’s the kind of blind partisanship, at the cost of core principles, that led George Washington to fear the creation of political parties in the United States.

2. It’s about the President far more than about the Supreme Court!

The Democrats (many of whom are making the “lesser-of-two-evils” argument) can be thanked for confirming Scalia (unanimous in the Senate), Roberts, Thomas, Kennedy, and Alito. And now they complain we might be stuck with more right-wing justices?

It is the President, not the Supreme Court, who is shredding the Constitution, the rule of law, and human and civil rights.

• It's not the Supreme Court who is refusing to apply the law to the rich and powerful (Wall Street fraudsters), war criminals (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and others who approved or perpetrated torture), and those who engaged in felonious spying on U.S. citizens' communications. It's the President.
• It's not the Supreme Court that is targeting U.S. citizens for assassination without due process. It's the President.
• It's not the Supreme Court that has asked for, and signed into law a bill providing, the authority to round up people (including U.S. citizens) and have them imprisoned for up to the rest of their lives with no charges, no trial, no legal assistance, and no right of habeas corpus. It's the President.
• The Supreme Court is not sitting around in the oval office deciding who will be killed by drones in at least four other nations (without the consent of those nations and in violation of those nations' sovereignty), while knowing that hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent men, women, and children will be killed in the process. It's the President. 

3. Draw your own moral line. Either you support Obama and what he's doing, or you don't. I don't -- and will do everything I can to restore the rule of law, an effective system of checks and balances, due process, the constitutional limits of war-making, and the right to be free from governmental tyranny and the horrendous abuses of civil and human rights committed during the Bush/Obama administrations.  

Click here to help us get to today's goal of $5,000.

Thank you for your support – Rocky Anderson 

P.S. After the election, let’s keep up this fight in a broad-based people’s movement for the restoration of our democracy.

 

 

 

Independent & Unaffiliated Voters: We are the 51% free concert

Rocky joined the Sam Smith Band live on stage this past Saturday, September 29th, after speaking to the crowd at Sugarhouse Park in Salt Lake City, Utah.

 

Keep the debate alive: Third-party debates coming up!

 

Rocky on The Young Turks, Third Party Candidate Series

Monday October 1, 2012 -- 7:00-8:00pm ET
Watch Rocky and Cenk Uygur discuss third-party politics and the presidential debates on Current TV's The Young Turks.

Democracy Now! Live in Denver, CO

Wednesday, October 3, 2012 -- 9:00-10:30pm ET
Rocky Anderson is joining Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman with Jill Stein for a third-party debate streaming live and running concurrently with the Obama-Romney debate.

2012 Free & Equal Presidential Debate

Tuesday, October 23, 2012 -- 9:00pm ET
Rocky joins Jill Stein, Gary Johnson, and Virgil Goode to debate the duopoly at University Club of Chicago. You can learn more at their website here -- there will be a live video feed available on their website.

 

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