{"id":930,"date":"2005-12-02T16:52:36","date_gmt":"2005-12-02T20:52:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/2005\/12\/02\/time-for-public-debates\/"},"modified":"2005-12-02T17:45:40","modified_gmt":"2005-12-02T21:45:40","slug":"time-for-public-debates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/2005\/12\/time-for-public-debates\/","title":{"rendered":"Time for Public Debates"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Democratic Party is asking<\/a> that people sign a letter to be sent to the Lamar billboard company<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Billboard Company Rejects Your Ads<\/a><\/p>\n

\nDespite a signed contract, Lamar Advertising has decided to reject the billboards that were to be placed outside of Rep. Jean Schmidt’s office in Portsmouth, Ohio. By rejecting these ads, Lamar has limited millions of Democrats’ right to be heard. You can put pressure on Lamar to support free speech by signing on to the letter from the DNC’s General Council, Joe Sandler.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Lamar reneged, saying it was “too negative.”<\/p>\n

(In case you missed it, Jean Schmidt was the one who said “I received a call from Col. Danny Bubp. He also asked me to send Congressman Murtha a message, that cowards cut and run, Marines never do.” They claim they weren’t calling him a coward, but the implication is clear, especially if you saw the video. Schmidt’s face was a sight to behold.)<\/p>\n

What’s missing here is an explanation of what happened between the approval and the refusal:<\/p>\n

“This rejection came more than 24 hours after the DNC had signed a contract with Lamar and 48 hours after they had accepted the artwork for the billboards you helped pay to put up.”<\/p>\n

Since Lamar had accepted the artwork already, this suggests intervention – either from inside or outside the company. Any likely suspects? Perhaps that could be a more fruitful focus at this point, if they really want to continue.<\/p>\n

There is a part of me that thinks the Democrats are wasting energy and money with these sorts of billboards, especially for such a fleeting thing. <\/p>\n

The woman was ordered to say what she did (she has admitted that), why not call attention to the puppetmasters? Why is someone telling her to send Murtha a message in the first place? Who might have suggested it to him? What kind of coordination on message might there have been behind the scenes?<\/p>\n

Or, why not focus on something else entirely, perhaps something more productive than simple slams on one comment, no matter how inappropriate or insulting it might have been. I feel that Murtha is perfectly able to take care of himself on this one. Offer support – and start contributing other ideas. We certainly have no lack of pressing concerns.<\/p>\n

We went into Iraq under a cloud of misrepresentations and doctored information. We have killed thousands of civilians. We have made life even worse for many of those living in Iraq, and we have participated in and allowed violations of international law. So here we are, with all the different groups at odds with one another no matter what we do, and now we have to deal with Iran (who has always been more of a threat than Iraq anyway). It’s a bad situation, no matter what the Bush administration would like Americans to believe.<\/p>\n

So what do we do? I think what we do is have very public, very open debates – with multiple perspectives represented. I think that there should be open forums, question and answer press conferences. <\/p>\n

This administration is no less answerable to us than any other. Let there be debates in the form that they do for the elections – every night for two hours on network television. One question for the two hours – several people chosen to debate.<\/p>\n

How about some from each of the warring groups in Iraq. Let the pundits vote on their own pundit representatives for the right and the left and the center. Bush and Cheney are mandatory, perhaps also Rice and Rumsfeld- let Democrats vote on representatives for their views. But get some real face-to-face debates going! Let’s really educate the American people on what is actually happening here. Let’s get some tough questions debated and answered. <\/p>\n

All this lowest common denominator propaganda is making everything much worse. The American people need more than what we are getting! We need to hear the arguments in order to responsibly and knowledgably support or oppose the different viewpoints. We need to hear back and forth, where each side has to really answer, not sidestep the question. If they don’t want to answer, they have to say “pass.” Our representatives are involved in a system that is filled with so much corruption – it’s time to bring democracy back into action.<\/p>\n

The media needs to do this for free. It is part of their civic responsibility in return for use of the public airwaves. <\/p>\n

And I mean every station<\/em>, on network and cable – nothing else on but this, you get me? <\/p>\n

Do we have to wait 50 years to understand just what we are doing here? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Democratic Party is asking that people sign a letter to be sent to the Lamar billboard company. Billboard Company Rejects Your Ads Despite a signed contract, Lamar Advertising has decided to reject the billboards that were to be placed outside of Rep. Jean Schmidt’s office in Portsmouth, Ohio. By rejecting these ads, Lamar has limited millions of Democrats’ right to be heard. You can put pressure on Lamar to support free speech by signing on to the letter from…<\/p>\n

Read More Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,17,10,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-armchair-activism","category-alien-nation","category-human-rights","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/930\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}