If it’s Fred Thompson announcing for President, then it must be the 4th of July, right?  Oh, wait, he was three months late.  Maybe Fred just thinks it is Hollywood fashionable to be late.

Does that mean if he gets elected President, he’ll wait until April for the inaugural ceremonies?  The question is what was Fred hiding from during those three months.   Why would he have not wanted to jump into the campaign and get up on stage and answer voters questions?

[ Insert Law and Order Sound Here ] Something is wrong with this picture and it most likely has to do with a piece of Senator Thompson’s history he was cleaning up to prepare for the rigors of the campaign trail.

Best of luck Fred.

The Democratic candidates who are refusing to participate in the Fox News Debate are wrong.  As well, the Republicans refusing to participate in the YouTube.com debate are also wrong.  Since when should a candidate refuse to answer questions from voters?

OK, so the first YouTube/CNN debate was sometimes on the silly side and maybe snowmen should be disqualified from asking questions in the future.  However, at least one debate should have all the questions come from real people and not from the talking heads from Cable or Broadcast TV.

If Mitt Romney can’t handle a snowman asking him questions, how does he propose to handle Osama Bin Landen?

Shame on the Republican candidates for thinking they are too good to have a voter ask a question directly.  Format be dammed, a voter’s question is a voter’s question and deserves an answer.

Of course the Internet has always had a strange etiquette all to itself and every once in a while everyone steps on someone’s Internet toes.  However, Joe Biden has really gone over the line with his intrusion into the Youtube.com debate process.

Rather than just encouraging his followers to submit questions for the debate and maybe even suggesting a topic for his supporters, Senator Biden actually posted the exact verbiage on his campaign website he’d like you to ask.  Yes you got it, word for word exactly what he wants you to look into a camera, say, and then upload to You Tube.

Now there are a couple of reasons Mr. Biden might be asking people to do this for him.  It is possible that he doesn’t know how to upload videos to YouTube and wants someone to ask his question for him or perhaps Joe is simply to shy to ask his own question. 

But, the real reason is that Joe Biden is disrespecting the entire process by attempting to jam his question up user’s (humm can’t say that … ok, got it) tube!  Biden is stepping all over the You Tube community by attempting to get just one question submitted by so many users that You Tube has no choice but to show the video during the debate.

But, why?  If Joe Biden wants to answer that question, why not just reword some other question that gets asked the way he’s done at all the other debates?  Could it be that Joe is afraid of offending You Tube users by restating their questions instead of answering them directly?  Well, too late Joe, you’ve already offended You Tube users by violating the integrity of the community’s process. 

Senator Biden, are you that afraid of the questions voters will ask that you can’t just let the process happen organically?  Can your question really be so important that it should jump the line and bump out real voter’s questions?

You can call Joe Biden’s campaign at 302-428-5427 and let them know what you think of Joe attempting to fake the You Tube process or you can email You Tube at abuse@youtube.com

Yes, absolutely, the debate format with 10 candidates is frustrating and tedious.  If they are that arduous and painful for viewers, it is difficult to imagine how the candidates get through them.

But, democracy is built on a foundation of ideas, and ideas are grown in the sunshine of open and honest exchange.  Without open debates early on in the process, the candidates get shielded from ideas – the very dreams of others.  Admittedly, sometimes these are ideas that the candidates don’t want to hear and sometimes even ideas that sound a bit odd.  But the first amendment doesn’t say we have the right to free and non-crazy sounding speech.

So, Hillary, Barrack and John, Please do not exclude anyone from the debates who has even a bare claim to legitimacy as a candidate for President.  Who knows, an idea might be brought forth, on which one of you might win.

After just having gone through an administration that has attempted to quash free speech at every opportunity, would it really be so bad to throw Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel a bone?  Just a tiny bone?

In the south for Thanksgiving dinner there is a delicacy served call turducken.  It’s a boned chicken stuffed into a boned duck stuffed into a boned turkey.  While not very good for your cholesterol, it is very tasty.

Fox news is having a bit of a problem with their planed Democratic debate on September 23rd.  It seems the turducken trio of John Edwards, Hillary Clinton and Barrack Obama won’t participate in the debate because they are claiming Fox News is biased.

Ya Think?  Anyone on the planet with at least two working brain cells knows Fox News bends the issues in favor of the right, but what does that have to do with a Democratic debate?

Using this faulty logic, it would be impossible to participate in any network’s debate.  Participation in the debate would not be a de facto endorsement of Fox News.  The Congressional Black Caucus is co-sponsoring the debates and none of the candidates are claiming that participation in the debate would imply tacit approval of all issues ever supported by the CBC.

So, then, are the candidates refusing to participate because they fear that the underpinning of the questions would be too conservative?   If so, that is also bogus logic.  If a candidate disagrees with the premise of a question, they have every right to say so.  Any of the Democratic candidates should have no problem controlling the debate by restating any question they don’t feel was fairly expressed.  If in fact a Fox News moderator did go over the top and actually attack a candidate, it would be a golden opportunity for publicity and attention, right?  Oh wait, the turduckens don’t need the attention do they?

More probably the reason for non-participation by the “top tier” candidates is that there is nothing to be gained by YAD (Yet Another Debate).  Participating in any debate format for a leading candidate has the potential for disaster.  One slip of the tongue or one misplaced pronoun combined with a slow news cycle and a candidate can find themselves going from the penthouse to the doghouse as far as the polls are concerned.

The only reason the leading candidates participate in any of the debates is fear that the other leading candidates will use their absence as ammunition against them.  However, with all three of the leading candidates refusing to join in the fun over at the Fox channel, there is no downside to declining the invitation.

The only possibility of getting the turduckens to show up on the 23rd of September is if one of them breaks and agrees to debate.  Most likely that will be the one with the most to gain and the least to lose.  If John Edwards says he’ll debate on Fox, then Obama will feel the heat to join.  If Obama comes along for that ride, then Clinton will have to be there as well or risk being attacked for being unwilling to debate.

Maybe the voters will get lucky and one of them will crack, otherwise it will be a boring night of television on the Fox News Channel.