how do i watch the debate?

ok, so i work evenings. i was at work, doing my job, when democratic presidential candidates barack obama and hillary clinton had a debate in pennsylvania. i come home, and i can read news stories and blog posts online about the debate. on the abc news website, they show short clips of the debate. but nowhere can i actually watch the debate. abc news told other news outlets that they could not use more than 30 seconds of footage from that debate in their coverage of what happened. but not even abc itself is letting me see the debate. i got home from work after it was already over, and now it is too late to watch the debate. i have not seen many of the presidential debates. i think i have only managed to see 2 of them. the corporate media prevents anyone from being able to watch the debates unless you are watching it on whatever channel it originally aired on, and only a few channels replay the same debate more than once. and if anyone tries to post the debate footage on the internet, it gets taken down. so, for someone like me who works during the hours when all the debates happen, i never get to see any of the debates live. and usually, i don’t get to see the debates at all, except for the brief clips that other people decide to show me. i wish i could watch all of the democratic primary debates that have happened, and that there were some website where you could just watch them. i could do it over the weekend when i am not working. maybe it would take 2 or 3 weekends, since there have been so many debates. but it would be worth it. perhaps i could find footage of the debates on a filesharing network such as bittorrent, gnutella, or edonkey2000. it is a shame that to watch debates, i would probably have to resort to illegal methods, because the people who own the copyrights to the debates (the corporate media companies) deny we the people the right to watch what happened unless it is on tv on their channel when they decide to show it. and if we happen to be working at jobs, or otherwise occupied and unable to be watching television at the time, we completely miss out on what happened, and have to rely on the spin that is posted online by various people who actually did watch the debates. from what i have read online, the debate last night between obama and clinton was a very stupid, childish one, because of all the stupid, childish questions from the abc news reporters, who apparently spent the whole debate trying to stir up controversy without discussing any actual issues. at least that is what almost all the bloggers who actually saw the debate posted in their blogs. unfortunately, i do not have the luxury of being able to watch the debate, so i am stuck having to take their word for what happened, instead of being able to see for myself the video footage of the debate. and apparently, there was also another debate recently at a place called “messiah college” between obama and clinton, and it was about who was more religious. i never found out when that debate was or what channel it was going to be on, and it is probably good that i missed it, because if i did see it, i would probably end up hating both of the candidates for being so damn religious and so out-of-touch with my small-town, lower-income, white working-class, ivy-league-educated, ultra-liberal, atheist views. oh sure, there are all sorts of stereotypes that working-class people in small towns are all religious or poorly educated or conservative. well what about those of us who live in the middle of nowhere and have crappy jobs despite having very good educational backgrounds because we are not very good at job interviews and we have severe emotional problems? we went to the best colleges and universities in the world, did very well, graduated, and found ourselves unable to deal with the real world, and were unable to achieve anywhere near the amount of success we had expected in life, and everything turned into a big disappointment after graduating college, so we ended up dirt poor living in the middle of nowhere, our excellent educational backgrounds not helping us out one bit. who is this “we” i am talking about? i am talking about those of us who went to really good colleges or universities, did well, graduated, but then were unable to get good high-paying jobs, were completely emotionally crushed by our failure to succeed in life, and ended up living the same sort of lower-income lifestyle that many uneducated people live. i am talking about those of us who once seemed to be doing quite well and being successful, until everything fell apart. i am talking about how you are told when you are a kid and when you are in high school that if you go to a really good college and study this or that major, you will be pretty much guaranteed to end up wealthy and successful. i am talking about how there are no guarantees in life, and sometimes something that you expect to get easily will be completely snatched away from you, leaving you desperate and miserable and completely disappointed that all of your hopes and dreams have been dashed and your life has been ruined. i am talking about working hard throughout high school to get good grades so you can get into a good college, and then working hard to complete a lot of difficult courses and do a double major in 4 years, and finally graduating, expecting that all your years of effort will finally be rewarded, and finding that your diploma means nothing if you don’t know how to write a good résumé or how to interview well, and then when you finally have a good résumé and better interviewing skills, employers will question your lack of any work experience in your field, and you will not be able to remember much of what you studied in college anymore because you are not using any of that information anymore, so you will find it hard to explain what you studied or what projects you worked on in college. at this point, your only hope is to learn how to be a spin doctor like the ones who work for hillary clinton that can spin things to make it look like she still has a chance at winning the race. you similarly have to spin things to make it look like you know what the hell you are talking about and would be able to do the job you are being interviewed for. and you are supposed to be enthusiastic during an interview! how can you act enthusiastic when you feel completely demoralized and hopeless, when you feel the interview is a pointless waste of time and you have no chance of getting the job? countless rejections eat away at what little is left of your self-esteem. so you end up getting a job that isn’t that great, that doesn’t pay too well, but at least it pays something, even though it isn’t what you studied in college. anyway, my point is, the media tries to generalize and say that all poor people are uneducated and all uneducated people are poor, or that all wealthy people are well educated and all well educated people are wealthy, when they talk about the various demographics. they try to paint liberalism as something that only wealthy elites believe in, that nobody else believes in, and the media portrays our country as having a vast majority of people in small towns and rural areas who represent the heartland, who are very conservative, who are the only true americans, who believe in god and religion and guns and all that, who hate gay people and mexicans and anyone who is different from them. the media accuses barack obama of elitism, when really the media itself are the ultimate elitists. they think they know everything, just because they tell everybody else what to think. well guess what? a lot of other people who aren’t in the media know how to think, and know the media is full of bullshit. the media is full of crap when they pretend that liberalism is just something for wealthy elitists, people in big cities, and people in northeastern states or the west coast. they are full of crap when they generalize about those of us who are dirt poor and live in the middle of nowhere, assuming we are all stupid morons who vote for bush. even the most conservative, republican state in the country, utah, has liberal democrats in it, such as the salt lake city mayor who wanted to impeach bush. even the most liberal, democratic state, massachusetts, has republicans in it and elects republicans like mitt romney to be governor. there is not a single state in this country that is entirely red or blue, entirely belonging to one party or the other. this is a country of 50 battleground states. the media loves to generalize about people. if all terrorists are muslims, then all muslims are terrorists. if all communists are left-wing people, then all left-wing people are communists. if lots of people say they are conservative, this means they agree with the republican party on everything and that the democrats will have to give up liberalism completely in order to have any chance of winning elections. some media outlets try to be neutral, some try to give both democrat and republican sides of the story, and some are just completely right-wing, such as everything owned by rupert murdoch or sun myung moon (fox news, wall street journal, new york post, washington times, etc.) but i am insulted that they think that all well-educated smart people end up becoming wealthy. maybe everyone in the elite media is educated and wealthy. but there are more and more colleges, more and more people going to college, more and more people graduating college, and less and less jobs for the college graduates to compete for. and we have to compete with people from china and india who do the same work for a fraction of the price. how can i be a computer programmer in america if a computer programmer in india does the same work for a tiny fraction of the price? add to that the fact that i have not done any programming in the 4 years since i graduated college, and have gotten quite rusty and forgotten most of what i learned in college. when i was first applying to colleges, the year was 1999, the dot-com boom was at its peak, and everyone told me that if i studied computer science at one of the top colleges, i would probably end up extremely wealthy. the computer science department at cornell has consistently been ranked within the top 5 in the nation. and yet, none of this did me any good finding a job in this field. the media seems too ignore the fact that the united states of america is turning into a third-world country. they seem to ignore the fact that just because we are sending lots of people to college and educating them doesn’t mean that there will be any high-paying jobs for them once they graduate. people like me who went to ivy-league schools are still considered “elite”, and i appreciate that, but it doesn’t make me feel much better about the fact that nobody wants to hire me for a job that pays significantly higher than minimum wage. i would like to be able to hear the candidates discuss how fucked-up this country is and how they plan on fixing it so that people like me can get high-paying jobs rather than having all the jobs go to third-world countries and having well-educated americans like me stuck working at jobs that do not pay enough to pay all the bills. i have less money now than i did 1 year ago, despite working the whole time and not spending much money on anything except the bills that i have to pay every month, and other essential things like gasoline to drive my car. everything is getting much more expensive. i pay for my own health insurance every month, it costs a whole lot, and it hardly covers anything at all. i would rather not spend a penny on health insurance, and have the government take care of all this shit for me. i also don’t like having to fill out stupid tax forms. if the government knows how to take money out of every paycheck i receive, why can’t they just do that and not require me to file any stupid forms once a year? why can’t they just continue to take the money out of every paycheck like they are already doing and not bother me with pointless paperwork? and why the hell do we still have troops in iraq? the war in iraq is the stupidest thing anybody has ever done in the entire history of the human race. anyone dumb enough to vote in favor of that war ought to be automatically disqualified from being considered as a potential president. that means you, john mccain and hillary clinton. in 2004, we had an unfortunate choice between the idiot who actually started the whole war in iraq himself (guided by his neocon advisers), and a somewhat foolish politician who had trouble making up his mind, who had originally voted for the war and supported it, but later changed his mind. now in 2008, there is a similarly foolish flip-flopping candidate who can’t seem to find a consistent position on iraq: hillary clinton. barack obama, on the other hand, was against the war before it even started, and has never wavered in his opposition. and john mccain supported the war before it even started, and has never wavered in his support. if obama and mccain were the candidates, we could have a real debate where there would be a stark contrast between the pro-war candidate and the anti-war candidate. with hillary clinton, who knows what side she is on? that is why i wish i could actually watch the damn debates on tv, but because of my work schedule, that is impossible. so, the best i can do is read other people’s biased analysis and commentary on what happened, which is a very unfortunate situation. it means i am unable to form my own opinions by watching the original video footage, and have to choose among the opinions of other people who did see the video footage of the debate. now there is probably some way that i could still watch the debate, if i really wanted to. maybe they will show it on tv again, or maybe there is some way to find the whole thing on the internet, rather than the few short clips you find on the abc news website. but i am too disillusioned, too apathetic about this bullshit, to even care enough to try that hard to find the stupid video footage, since i already know this was the worst debate ever, from what i read about it. why even bother? i already have my mind made up, and obama already has enough of a delegate lead for a guaranteed victory. all hillary clinton is doing by staying in the race is tarnishing barack obama and the democratic party, and helping john mccain, while at the same time ruining her own image and the image of her husband, former president bill clinton. it is a sorry state of affairs for us democrats. at least mike huckabee had the decency not to criticize john mccain, the front-runner in his own party, when huckabee was staying in the race despite an insurmountable delegate lead in favor of mccain against huckabee. it is a shame that hillary clinton has acted so badly that i think that mike huckabee would be a good role model for her to follow. i mean, i don’t like mike huckabee at all, at least as far as his positions on the issues, but at least he conducts himself much better than hillary clinton. hillary clinton is acting a lot more like a different republican candidate: mitt romney. the only difference is, mitt romney dropped out of the race and hillary clinton is never going to do that. she is basically going to take her kamikaze campaign to the convention the same way ted kennedy took his kamikaze campaign to the 1980 democratic convention to cripple jimmy carter against ronald reagan. now i know that both ted kennedy and john kerry have endorsed barack obama, and both ted kennedy and john kerry have plenty of flaws. but i think the flaws of ted kennedy and john kerry can also be found in hillary clinton, and perhaps ted kennedy and john kerry picked barack obama because they realized the error of their ways in past elections, and had newfound wisdom. hillary clinton has both ted kennedy’s crazy refusal to concede defeat despite being way behind in delegates, and john kerry’s ridiculous flip-flopping on whether to support the war in iraq. barack obama has neither of those flaws. i just wish i had the chance to see clinton and obama debate, and address all of the manufactured controversies that the media has been playing up recently. i have nothing but contempt for the news media. the news media gets things wrong all the time, on all sorts of issues. they never took global warming seriously until al gore made a movie about it. they treated george bush junior with kid gloves after 9/11 and did not stop their kid-glove treatment until after michael moore made the movie fahrenheit 9/11. it always takes someone outside the news media to point out that they are getting something completely wrong and need to shape up. the news media’s favorable coverage of the bush administration and its preposterous accusations against iraq were what allowed bush to invade iraq, since without all the news media propaganda in favor of war back in late 2002 and early 2003, the public would never have gone along with it, especially if the media told the truth about how iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. and today, the news media keeps attacking both democratic candidates with manufactured scandals, while they treat john mccain with kid gloves, because the news media loves john mccain, since he is a “maverick” and cooks barbecues for them to eat. john mccain has spent so many years seducing the news media, it is unthinkable that they would ever turn on him and start covering him objectively. barack obama had a whole lot of favorable coverage for a while, but then a saturday night live skit was enough to send the media into an obama-attacking frenzy, and they have been pounding him with fake scandals ever since that saturday night live skit mocking the media portrayal of obama aired. now the media elites think “the surge is working” and that john mccain’s pro-war views will actually help, not hurt him in the november election. of course, it is entirely up to the media which candidate they help elect in november. if they portray the war in iraq and the surge as a brilliant success story with general david petraeus as the greatest national hero in american history, obviously this will help john mccain. if they portray the war as a lost cause, and question why we are fighting this war in the first place, and talk about all the people who have been killed or wounded, both americans and iraqis, obviously this will help barack obama. the media are really the ones who decide elections, not the voters. think of it this way: if coke had really really lousy commercials and pepsi had really really amazingly good commercials, a lot of people would buy pepsi instead of coke. so if the media makes one political party or candidate look bad and another political party or candidate look good, it has the same effect. the crucial swing voters who decide elections are heavily influenced by the media and its portrayal of things. hardcore partisans who are staunch in their beliefs are not as easily influenced by the media’s bullshit. but partisans do not determine the outcomes of elections; swing voters do. and swing voters generally do whatever the commentators on tv tell them to do. of course, there is one way that candidates and political parties can get around the media and win elections without media help: get out the vote (g.o.t.v.) efforts, especially high-tech ones that target individual voters, using “microtargeting”. this was first pioneered by new york city mayor michael bloomberg when he first ran for mayor and won, and then george w. bush used this technique to win in 2004, despite all the polls that said john kerry would win. now both political parties use this technique of microtargeting, which is basically just a more refined way of doing the get out the vote efforts they have been doing since it was first pioneered by boss tweed in the 1800s. microtargeting is just a much more creepy way of doing it, because it invades the privacy of each voter by collecting all sorts of data on them in order to classify them and determine if and how to get them on board with the campaign, sort of like how people’s credit ratings are calculated by corporations that know everything about them by collecting as much information as possible about each person. these get out the vote efforts are why polls end up being different from the results on election day. and they are the only way to beat the media and win elections in a hostile media environment. far more preferable than get-out-the-vote operations would be a media that actually reports the truth objectively. but that will never happen, as long as the news media is a bunch of humans, because humans are impossible of being objective or neutral. maybe someone could someday design a robotic news anchor that would report all the news objectively, using infallible logic circuits to determine the truth. or if we could find someone who had no emotions or opinions at all, that could also probably work, although it might be hard to find someone like that. but do i trust a bunch of human beings no different from you or me who have opinions and emotions just like everyone else to objectively and truthfully and logically tell me what really happened in the news? of course not! being objective is just a game of pretend. nobody can ever be objective. but back to the main subject, i would still like to see the most recent debate by abc news, and perhaps also the one at messiah college about how awesome christianity is. it does not make much sense to have obama and clinton debate, anyway; they agree on pretty much everything, so it is basically just a clash of personalities. besides, hillary clinton is so far behind in delegates, her campaign is a joke, and we should ignore her and focus on the main contest between barack obama and john mccain. she has as much chance of being the next president as ron paul.