What questions should be asked in the foreign policy debate?

I've got a couple, that I don't have particular answers for and that aren't meant as "gotchas" for either candidate (but maybe for both).

• In the last debate, President Obama mentioned in passing a "bipartisan consensus" on foreign policy. If such a consensus exists, how can voters have a say in foreign policy? Or do they?
  
  
• We say that we support democracy and human rights, but in the last decade or so alone, we have supported the violent overthrow and attempted overthrow of democratically elected governments in Venezuela, Haiti, and Honduras to name a few. What priorities are trumping democracy in situations like that?
  
  
• What is the United States policy toward access to and hegemony over oil and natural gas and its transport in the Middle East and Caspian Sea Basin?
  
  
• If we are fighting a war on terror, when there is a conflict between the people in various oil rich countries and our oil companies, shouldn't we side with the people to reduce the animosity toward the United States?
  
  
• The United States fought two wars after 9/11, one in Afghanistan that was peripherally involved in the attacks and another in Iraq that wasn't involved in the attacks at all. Yet Saudi Arabia remained untouched despite the Joint Congressional Inquiry into 9/11 finding substantial evidence of Saudi government involvement, such as the declassified FBI report on a Saudi agent who picked up two of the hijackers at LAX, set them up in an apartment, and funneled money to them from the Saudi ambassador's wife until the time of the attacks. Why did that involvement in the greatest loss of civilian life on American soil not merit a military or even diplomatic response? Or were those other wars about something else altogether?
  
  
• The international banking order seems to be causing more instability and suffering and the concentration of wealth at the top. Should supporting that order continue to be a top priority of the United States, or should it be seen as a national security threat?
  

Why does media treats Michelle Rhee as education "reformer" when she's really a corporate lobbyist?

The tide is turning on the education "reform" movement that isn't so much about "reform" as "removing" our tax dollars from public schools and putting them in the pockets of the already wealthy.

This article cites polls showing the public backed the teachers in the recent Chicago strike as opposed to the corrupt corporate agenda of Rahm Emanuel.

It also mentions that 49 Democrats have recently dropped their affiliation with ALEC, who has crafted the corporate education "reform" bills, and that Obama and Arne Duncan largely remaining on the sidelines in the strike was likely because Obama finally saw how unpopular those ideas really were.

What passes for education reform in Washington and the MSM is really
"a brie-and-chablis 'reform' movement" that is "portraying teachers as villains" as Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson put it. After outsourcing our jobs, and playing craps with our mortgages, now they want to do the moral equivalent of pulling out our fillings and melting them down for the gold by stealing our children's education.

Democrats need to drop this corrupt right wing shit NOW.

Obama, we can forgive you.

America forgave JFK when he admitted he was wrong to initially back the Bay of Pigs invasion, and changing course here and putting education policy in the hands of educators instead of hedge fund managers and trust fund babies is a much smaller reversal.

You already gave Wall Street a big present by not breaking up their banks and prosecuting their execs. You don't need to sacrifice our kids to them too.

Third party candidates ought to moderate the debates

Get the Greens and Libertarians and even next largest party after that (or two) to agree on some questions.

They would likely not be the softballs and turds the MSM comes up with.

I know this would never fly with the commission on presidential debates, which is set up to limit the participants and the questions to what the beltway elite is comfortable with, but it would be worth it to see the top candidates get such an invitation, and have to explain why they refuse it.

Will Candy Crowley be fired or ostracized for daring to fact check Romney on the spot?

It is so rare for the MSM to do that, let alone to a pol's face (unless the happen to be wrong AND bucking the conventional inside-the-beltway wisdom...or just the bucking part).

I wonder if she is going to be moved to the progressive ghetto at MSNBC or CNN will stand by her.

It would have also been nice if she had interrupted Romney and said, "Even if he DIDN'T say 'act of terror' for two weeks, SO THE FUCK WHAT? Why do those magic words matter so much to you? If he doesn't invoke the terrorist boogeyman, are you worried people won't be adequately terrorized here?"

But that really would cost her her job.

What, if any, will be the consequences for her daring to do real time fact-checking?

The Republican catchphrase that needs a knife in it quick: "trickle down government"

Obviously, they've done some work on that one, focused grouped it and all that and now they're as proud as a baby who figured out he can make an ashtray out of his own poop.

Democrats should have hammered that as soon as it came out of a Republican candidates mouth:

"That's a funny phrase you use, because it connects a failed Republican idea, 'trickle down economics' that gives to the rich and hoping it benefits the rest (which it doesn't) that people have realized is a failure, with 'government' that since the New Deal people have realized CAN work when our private sector falters, and not by 'trickling down' but directly helping the people who need it most."

Obama could have done this himself with his grandfather and the GI Bill, himself and student loans, unemployment insurance, Social Security, and other programs, in all those cases, we didn't give money to the rich or some remote part of the government hoping it would somehow trickle down to those who need it. We gave it directly to them. And it worked. And continues to work. Unless you build yachts, train dressage horses, or answer the phone at a bank in the Cayman Islands, REPUBLICAN TRICKLE DOWN ECONOMICS is not going to help you.

"tell our kids that before they have babies, they ought to think about getting married"

Right wing politicians have a unique ability to talk to the rest of us like we are retarded and they are too.

Bush made the same point about just getting married when he wanted to double the work requirement for moms on welfare.

Could it be that most of them WANT to get married but in fact have good reason not to?

If the guy who got them pregnant is not stable economically himself, sometimes employed, sometimes not enough to contribute to a family, sometimes needing his significant other to support him, why would she want to lock that in?

Additionally, they know all to well how that could effect any government aid they get, and very often the additional income from dad isn't enough to make up for the lost wages.

If Republicans really cared about "family values," they would enact policies that paid a living wage, so people can afford to get married, and enforce labor laws so parents have time to spend with their kids, and maybe even enact a generous family leave policy so parents could bond with their kids for a year or so before shipping them off to daycare.

I think the real family values Republicans want for the rest of us is for the whole family to work together, like sharecroppers or migrant farm workers, or stand side by side for 16 hours a day in that Foxconn factory.

Rahm Emanuel takes liberal base-bashing to a whole new level

We have certain rules on DU about not criticizing Democratic candidates in general election season.

Corporate Democrats need to exercise similar restraint about not shitting on Democratic voters.

Message to Rahm: you need more than just wealthy donors and corporations to win elections.

Rahm thinks of himself as some kind of Democratic Karl Rove, but he is more like the cashier at an expensive restaurant, who thinks he's important because he handles the rich people's money.

One thing I liked in the debate: Bush's name

I would like to see the debate moderator ask Rmoney/Ryan ONE question: what are you going to do differently than George W. Bush?

A variation of that question for Obama would be nice too: You're election was widely seen as a repudiation of the policies of George W. Bush, yet you continued many of them, often as starting positions rather than as compromises after a good wrassle with Republicans in Congress. Which policies are immune to the influence of voters? What are we going to get from you that we got from Bush and would likely get from a President Romney?

Pennsylvania Sec of Ed Altered Test Rules to Inflate Charter School Scores

More than half of charter schools in the state fail by the very yardstick corporate "reformers" demand be used to judge real public schools, so the state Secretary of Education tweaks the reporting rules to make it look less bad.

This is the kind of rigging of the game you get when government services are contracted out to for profit businesses that can afford to take some of their profits to pay politicians to put their thumb on the scale.

This would be an embarrassment simply to the state of Pennsylvania if this wasn't the bipartisan federal policy that OUR PRESIDENT reaffirmed his commitment to as recently as the first debate.

When are enough of these stories going to add up to shame at least Democratic politicians into admitting this is a corrupt, costly mistake?

Our current K-12 education policy is like finding a malnourished, neglected kid, and instead of nursing him back to health, smothering him with a pillow so you can sell his organs.

Mitt Romney Style: more effective than the debate and all ads combined

Put a fork in him--he's done.