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As the November 8 election approaches, I am dumbfounded by so many voters’ resolute determination to not look behind the curtain at the facts evidencing numerous criminal acts by Hillary Clinton, or the myriad hypocritical business practices of ...

Every four years, the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) puts on a series of campaign commercials disguised as presidential and vice-presidential debates.

The CPD is, in theory, a not-for-profit organization "established in 1987 to ensure that debates, as a permanent part of every general election, provide the best possible information to viewers and listeners."

But the CPD is really just a scam the Republican and Democratic parties use to funnel illegally large "in kind" campaign donations, in the form of tens of millions of dollars' worth of free media exposure, exclusively to their own candidates.

A real nonpartisan, not-for-profit debate organization would use objective criteria for deciding which candidates may participate in debates. The CPD continuously refines its criteria with an eye toward ensuring that no third party or independent candidates qualifies for a microphone at a CPD "debate."

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

It's a shell game intended to keep us focused on and distracted by all of the politically expedient things that are being said - about militarized police, surveillance, and government corruption - while the government continues to frogmarch us down the road toward outright tyranny.

Unarmed citizens are still getting shot by militarized police trained to view them as the enemy and treated as if we have no rights. Despite President Obama's warning that the nation needs to do some "soul searching" about issues such as race, poverty, and the strained relationship between law enforcement and the minority communities they serve, police killings and racial tensions are at an all-time high. Just recently, in Texas, a white police officer was suspended after video footage showed him "manhandling, arresting, and drawing his gun on a group of black children outside a pool party."

Americans' private communications and data are still being sucked up by government spy agencies. The USA Freedom Act was just a placebo intended to make us feel better without bringing about any real change. As Bill Blunden, a cybersecurity researcher and surveillance critic, points out, "The theater we've just witnessed allows decision-makers to boast to their constituents about reforming mass surveillance while spies understand that what's actually transpired is hardly major change."

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