Dandelion SaladDemocracy Now! Oct. 2, 2008No Debate: How the Republican and Democratic Parties Secretly Control the Presidential DebatesThe Obama and McCain campaigns jointly negotiated a detailed secret contract dictating the terms of all the 2008 debates. This includes who gets to participate, as well as the topics raised during the debates. We speak to Open Debates founder and executive director George Farah. Real Video StreamReal Audio StreamMP3 Downloadhttp://www.democracynow.org/2008/10/2/no_debate_how_the_republican_and*** IWantDemocracyNow***The Ifill Truth: ALL the Debates are Biased!Posted by Loralynne Krobetzky www.votenader.org/ Oct. 2, 2008The charade of the so-called Presidential Debates continues.  Already a carefully orchestrated question and answer session controlled by the Democrat and Republican parties to the exclusion of other candidates, it now emerges that even the moderators may hold partisan bias. Headlines shot up around the country, raising the question of whether the debates can be considered legitimate if the moderator holds a bias. The question that Americans should really be asking, however, is not merely who’s moderating, but rather, who is controlling the debates?Gwen Ifill, of PBS, slated to moderate tonight’s Vice-Presidential Debate, has penned a book titled The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama.  One must instantly wonder how Ifill can call this the “Age” of Obama without having a serious predilection towards the outcome of these debates. Moreover, the book is set to be released around the time of the Inauguration, January, 2009, seemingly to usher in the “age of Obama.”  Columnist Michelle Malkin worries about Ifill’s ability to objectively moderate, but her criticism reveals deeper inadequacies within the system.  “My dictionary, Malkin writes, “defines ‘moderator’ as ‘the nonpartisan presiding officer of a town meeting.’ On Thursday, PBS anchor Gwen Ifill will serve as moderat...