MeridianOMRebel wrote:

This is something that I cannot understand the legal aspects. The debates are governed and controlled by the D's and R's, even though they are supposed to be unbiased, but check this out.

In order to qualify to be in the debates, certain polls are used and someone must poll at 15%. The problem - the polls don't mention 3rd parties in their questions in most of them. This is done intentionally after Ross Perot made the debates to make it harder for anyone other than a D or R to be able to qualify.

But wait, there's more. The D and R also sign a contract with the debates commission to not appear on any other debates except the commission's. Thus, ensuring that no 3rd party can participate.

If folks don't think the Democrats and Republicans aren't the same party with this corrupt stunt that they get away with each year, then people are just truly brainwashed.

 
Well what do you expect when the sheeple of the U.S. say things like, "I vote Democrat because my mother and daddy voted that way, and I will never change", or in the words of John Prine's (may he rest in peace) Grampa was a Carpenter, "...and voted for Eisenhower 'cause Lincoln won the war"? 
We the people let politicians get way with this crap because we (and that includes me) don't get involved.

D's and Rs are not the problem, all around the world there are political systems that have the same problems and worse that have many viable parties. They are just as dysfunctional and prone to issues.   

the problem with Ds and Rs in our country starts with the media today.  The media wants and need chaos.  They want those folks who aren't pinned into an exact corner to either chose a side or become disenfranchised. When you turn on the TV and everything you see from the news and the entertainment industry is normalizing the abnormal or destructive, that is not really an issue of politics, it is an issue of culture.  A culture that is being destroyed by progressivism. Progressives live on the right and the left.  the issue is the media ignores, deflects and lies about destructive actions and policies of the progressive left because the media supports those policies.    But if you are a dumb ass on the right, the media take this or any incident that can be painted in a negative light and use broad strokes to portray the entire right as what ever negative narrative they are using at the moment.  

The media is the root of our issues right now.  Most of us buy products every day and consume entertainment who are adding to the noise.  You watch CNN, MSNBC, NBC, ABC, ESPN, print news, netflix, yahoo, google, twitter, facebook,  etc.  All these mediums have various degrees of liberal progressive slants and yet we continue to fund their activism. 

The problem is there are not many "right leaning" organizations that have been productive or successful at giving the constructive alternative solution.  There is a new newspaper in my area that started up a few years ago to combat the very liberal slant of the other established news.  The problem is, they think since they are new and small, they have to hype every little issue up to get people's attention. The problem is most people just want reality.  And when the right screams about something, they embellish a lot of message to try and attract attention, but the left media will pounce on anything that can not be 100000% validated and then coordinate the destroy the message and the messenger.   

I can't go on facebook anymore without seeing any of my political friends (and I have many on both sides), who if you are on the right, almost every political post has some frivolous fact check that cherry picks a comment and then works to falsify the point any way they can. But my left friends and spew all the craziness they care to and I never see any of their stories "fact checked". 

Long story short, policy is what I look at, regardless of party.  Good ideas and constructive actions go past politics.  But the media does not allow anything good come of any action unless it can align with a narrative.  Most people just don't see it because we are busy with life, the small percentage of people who are immersed in this type of stuff.  It is hard to have a conversation as a politically active person with someone who is passive politically because the politically active people bring to much heat to the conversation and does not make an impact to the debate a lot of times.  Everyone is exposed to left leaning commentary on a daily basis so many people have learned to filter out the bias, but they have also been conditioned to negative responses to anything right of center.