A show on Al Jazeera English called “The Stream” invited me to appear to discuss third parties, supporters of third party candidates and US electoral politics in general yesterday. They did a full show on the election and how it was a close contest, highlighted the views of voters who consider Obama and Romney to be mostly similar, and noted there are people who simply say third party candidates have no chance of winning. Then, they posed the question, “By refusing to endorse Obama or Romney, could these citizens decide the next president and what would that mean?”

I appeared on the program with Michael Moschella, a founder of the New Leaders Council and also a political director for the Truman Security Project, and Jason Brennan, a professor at Georgetown University and author of “The Ethics of Voting.”

A nonprofit, Free and Equal, committed to promoting fairness in the US electoral process, hosted a debate last night, which included third party candidates running for president. The debate, held at the Hilton Hotel in Chicago, stood in stark contrast to the Obama-Romney debates put on by the anti-democratic and corrupt Commission on Presidential Debates. I appeared on Al Jazeera English last night to share some thoughts on the presidential debate.

One hour and a half was the time the two campaigns agreed upon for the foreign policy debate. They had a moderator, Bob Schieffer, who would ask all questions from the point of view that America is justified in whatever it does so long as it does it. When and how to do it would be the discussion, not why or whether it was legal, moral or humane.

A copy of the secret debate contract the campaigns for Barack Obama and Mitt Romney drew up for the 2012 presidential debates has leaked. TIME has posted it. The contract includes express limitations related to other candidates qualifying for debates, not publicly calling or participating in additional debates, not mentioning people in the audience beyond family members or not addressing questions to each or asking candidates to take pledges.

It is what should be expected from a two candidates from the two most prominent political parties in America, which wrested control of the debates from the League of Women Voters back in the 1980s. The two parties launched the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD), which has conducted itself like the corrupt organization it was destined to become by working to exclude third party candidates, debate moderators and key issues/topics for decades now.

Mother Jones’ Kevin Drum thinks a problem for liberals is that they need hacks.

The Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) is holding its first presidential debate tonight with Democratic Party presidential candidate Barack Obama and Republican Party presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Excluded from the debate will be Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson and Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, who are both on enough state ballots to win the amount of electoral votes necessary to assume the presidency.

Nationally President Obama currently holds an impressive seven point lead over Mitt Romney, according to two new polls. That is equal to the margin by which Obama beat John McCain in the popular vote in 2008.

The ten issues highlighted are: mass incarceration and the drug war, the housing market, the India/Pakistan conflict, overfishing, global disease and malnutrition, internet privacy, America’s security state and shadow wars, factory farming, civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and segregation by race and class in education.

Colorado is among the swingest of the presidential swing states and could end up being the decisive state this election. It was selected to hold the first of the Presidential debates, which will be about domestic issues. As a result President Obama and Mitt Romney are going to be spending a lot of time and money in the state. While they could relatively easily ignore the marijuana initiatives in the other states, it won’t be easy for them to ignore Amendment 64, which would legalize cannabis in Colorado.

Gary Johnson, the popular former Republican governor of New Mexico, is running for President on the Libertarian Party ticket. He is possibly the most popular third party candidate this cycle, though support is quite small at a national level. While Johnson currently seems to have effectively no chance of winning, he could still be a factor.