If only last Tuesday’s Las Vegas Democratic “debate” had, as the saying goes, stayed in Vegas instead of being broadcast nationwide.

It was terribly boring. Why? Because rather than debate, Obama, Clinton and Edwards quite calculatedly sat back and held their fire, letting each other repeat their familiar position statements. At this point they sounded like robots. Hillary cares about children and thinks Bush is an ass. Barak opposed the Iraq war all along. Edwards grew up poor. Did you know this?

Obama and Clinton officially ended their week-long silly spat over who was more important to the civil rights movement, MLK Jr. or LBJ. From then on, as in chess, they played for a draw. If you awoke at the end of the debate with the same feeling you sometimes get after arriving at work in the morning and not being able to remember a thing about the drive, you weren’t alone. I’m sure the candidates felt the same.

That all that nasty wrangling about MLK Jr. and LBJ could just be passed off onto overzealous staffers behaving like, gosh, puppies acting like puppies, shows how important the issue was. What better proof of the giddy, lazy childishness of the media than its weeklong focus on this as news? The media only want to attract and entertain an audience, and, as such, MLK Jr. and LBJ were last week’s Terry Schiavo.

Co-host Brian Williams reflected how detached from immediate reality the event was when, returning from a commercial break, he welcomed everyone back — to Los Angeles.

Speaking of which — commercials? Will the State of the Union Address break for commercials? What’s next, product placement?

Obama and Clinton, as leaders, can afford to play for a draw. Edwards mistakenly joined in the game of patty cake, thus giving up an opportunity to get some much-needed attention. Why? Edwards surely knows a draw is a loss. Are vice-presidential or cabinet considerations gaining, at last, a place in his tactics? He may have jabbed, but he never swung a punch.

With the help of the Nevada Supreme Court, MSNBC rescinded its invitation to Dennis Kucinich, on, it seems to this non-lawyer, the technical ground of MSNBC’s First Amendment rights as a private corporation. As such, of course, it trashed the ideas that openness and communication are necessary to our electoral process and that a license to broadcast carries with it certain responsibilities to the public interest.

Democracy Now! had Representative Kucinich on its show. The transcript, which includes the entire debate, is available on the Democracy Now! website. Here are his answers to questions from Amy Goodman and answers to questions asked of the candidates, with the same time restrictions. Kucinich has a lot more to say than the other candidates, and it is a shame the American people were kept from hearing him.

On his exclusion from the debate by NBC: “…(T)his goes far beyond my humble candidacy. It goes right to the question of democratic governance, whether a broadcast network can choose who the candidates will be based on their narrow concerns, because they’ve contributed — GE, NBC and Raytheon, another one of GE’s property — have all contributed substantially to Democratic candidates who were in the debate. And the fact of the matter is, with GE building nuclear power plants, they have a vested interest in Yucca Mountain in Nevada being kept open; with GE being involved with Raytheon, another defense contractor, they have an interest in war continuing. So NBC ends up being their propaganda arm to be able to advance their economic interests…

“I think that what they’re trying to do is stack a presidential election using their broadcast media power, and they’re doing it to further the interests of their own parent corporation, General Electric. And this is something that I am not going to stop challenging, because this is really important to issues of democratic governance, what kind of country we’re going to have, because the corporations are really in a position where they’re using the broadcast media to rig presidential elections by determining who’s viable based on who gets coverage; in the advent of an election, who goes on the news shows and who is getting their contributions from their executives. This is a real serious matter.

“I imagine if Richardson hadn’t pulled out and had been in fourth place, this wouldn’t have been an issue. You know, there’s an underlying question here, as well, and that is that: What right does the media have to establish the criteria as to who should be able to be in a debate in the first place, especially when they have corporate interests that could be affected by various candidates or appreciated by various candidates? So, you know, this is a profound issue of democratic governance, of our presidential — the integrity of our presidential selection process, and goes to the heart of the need for real reforms in the media.”

Responses to questions asked during the debate:

On foreign ownership of American flagship brands: “Well, the issue of whether or not we have foreign investment has been a longstanding issue, and so it’s nothing new. But the question is, what’s happening with Wall Street, where they have a lack of liquidity, because, you know, they’ve made some bad investments, and beyond that, the subprime lending scandal has really been something that was pyramided out of the Fed’s lack of oversight of banks and of the SEC’s lack of oversight on hedge funds.
Now, hedge funds have invested mightily in presidential candidates. Senators Clinton, Obama and Edwards raised substantial amounts of money from those hedge funds that they now claim they’re going to have a means of oversight. We have to look at Senator Edwards’s record itself. He worked for a year for the Fortress hedge fund, earned a half-a-million dollars, did not explain exactly what kind of work he did. He apparently went to about a half-a-dozen meetings, and he said that he did this in order to learn about poverty. Meanwhile, Fortress held in its portfolio subprime loans, as well as Medicare privatization, Humana, which more or less have policies that would seem to be antithetical to Senator Edwards’s publicly stated positions on policy.

“I think that it’s going to be very important to have a president who is able to challenge frontally the very interests that have been able to escape regulation through these hedge funds, who will be able to protect private investors who may have been brought into the initial public offering of hedge funds, where the transparency is still quite limited, and who will be able to help rebuild the American economy to the point of where we can have a true housing program, where people can have housing and gain access to credit. This really goes to the heart of the role of the Federal Reserve, and … “ (the allotted 30 seconds expired on the question.)

On Iraq: “I’m the only person running for president who not only voted against the war, but voted 100% of the time against funding the war. What you’ve heard here is a bunch of nuancing. They’re all saying the same thing, that they will keep troops in Iraq. The troops will be kept there to protect an embassy. The troops will be kept there for counterinsurgency and for training the Iraqi military. Well, the fact of the matter is, we must get out of Iraq. We must end the occupation, close the bases, bring the troops home. We don’t have a right to have an embassy there, as we are an occupying army. And any way that the United States government would keep its foot in the door of Iraq is a way that the war will continue, because the occupation is fueling the insurgency.

“I’m the only one running who had a plan that was introduced immediately after the invasion that called for not only an end to the occupation, closing of the bases, bringing the troops home, but also a parallel process of an international security and peacekeeping force that would move in as our troops leave. We cannot get such a force until the United States determines it will end the occupation. Once we determine we will do that, we can move and to have a rapprochement with Syria, as well as opening diplomatic relations with Iran for the first time in 29 years.

“It’s vitally important that we work to effect a program of reconciliation between the Shiites, the Sunnis and the Kurds; an honest reconstruction program, where we get rid of the crooked contractors and the mercenaries who have compounded the American occupation. In addition to that, we need to have a program of reparations to the Iraqi people. Over a million innocent Iraqis have been killed. We must repair the breach. That breach was a monetary one. It is a moral and social one. We have a lot of work to do there, and we’re going to have to do it not by occupying, but by showing that we can have a leader who’s compassionate enough to recognize a moral and financial responsibility to the Iraqi people.

“We also have to make sure that the Iraqi people have full control of their oil. I’m the only one who’s running who understood immediately that the Bush program for reconciliation was in fact a plan to privatize Iraq’s oil in order to gain control over a $30 billion oil wealth.

“I think that it is manifestly clear that the only person running for president who will bring our troops home, who will get out of there within three months from taking office, is myself. And all the others have tried to game this issue. They either voted for the war, in the case of Senator Edwards and Senator Clinton, or they voted to fund the war, in the case of Senator Edwards, Senator Clinton and Senator Obama, who, by the way, campaigned in saying, well, he opposed the war from the start, but then when he was elected to the Senate, his voting record is indistinguishable from Senator Clinton’s with respect to funding the war. So you can’t talk out of both sides of your mouth on this thing. You’re either for getting out of Iraq, or you’re not. If you’re for getting out of Iraq, you don’t keep troops there for any purpose whatsoever.

On what he would have asked the candidates had he been sitting at the table with them: “…Well, I would have asked John Edwards, you point a finger at somebody else, are you not pointing three back at yourself? The fact in the matter is, Senator Edwards, who has quite a gambit of being able to accuse the others of taking special interest money, his campaign was financed and given a big boost by members of the Fortress hedge fund in Washington — in New York. He would attack Senator Clinton for having money from Washington lobbyists, and he would be taking money from New York hedge fund operators. In addition to that, his holdings in Fortress, his personal holdings — he put a huge amount of his personal investment into the Fortress hedge fund. And in one of their portfolios is Humana, which is leading the way to privatizing of Medicare. Now, since, Senator Edwards, you are advocating private accounts, that people essentially be forced to buy mandated private insurance, it seems to me that would benefit Humana and increase the value of their position in Fortress.

“I think we need to have an understanding here, that the larger issue is public financing. All these people who are running for president are good people, but we have a system that — it’s a bad system. It requires people to do the kinds of pirouettes and gymnastics to make it appear that they’re pure and chaste while their opponents are not. The truth is that the whole system is rotten and that only public financing, a constitutional amendment which would overturn Buckley v. Valeo, will rescue our politics from private control. Until then, we’re going to continue to see our politics in America be as an auction, where policy is sold to the highest bidder.”

On the question about requiring colleges to allow military recruitment or lose funding: “Our society is being militarized. And part of the problem is NBC, which is a partner defense contractor through the ownership of General Electric of both NBC and Raytheon. So NBC is really promoting war here. The truth of the matter is that we need to make it possible for our young people, if they desire to go in the military, they can go to a recruiter’s office, instead of telling campuses that if you don’t let recruiters on campus, you’re going to lose your money. That, to me, is antithetical to a democratic society.

“We should be finding ways for young people to be able to go to college tuition-free, and I have such a proposal that would enable every person, every young person who wants to go to a two- or four-year public college or university go tuition-free, by the government spending money into circulation.

“We need to reorient our society. These kind of questions really are intent on continuing the militarization of our society and of telling young people in a very covert — well, actually in a very overt way, ‘Well, here are your options for a career in the military,’ which is an honorable career, of course, but at the same time, in our society, young people are finding not only are they having trouble being able to afford a college education, but once they get that degree, what are their options after that? I mean, our economy has been a mess.

On storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain: “None of these candidates are talking about phasing out the nuclear industry, which is the underlying issue. Senator Edwards voted for Yucca Mountain, and now he’s opposed to it. We have a condition here where we have to have a carbon-free and nuclear-free energy policy. And until that happens, we’re going to keep seeing the nuclear industry trying to find place to put their waste, and Yucca Mountain is something that they’re working on.

“Furthermore, here we are again. NBC, owned by General Electric. General Electric, the largest manufacturer — one of the largest manufacturers of nuclear power plants in the world — has a vested interest in seeing places around the country where nuclear waste can be deposited. They are not in any position to accept a policy that would call for a nuclear-free energy policy that phases out nuclear plants. We have dozens of nuclear plants that operating long past the time of licensure, places like Vermont Yankee, where there are serious issues relating to the integrity of the plant itself.”

“It’s time that America recognizes we have to move toward wind and solar and sustainable source of energy. Certainly, we have to move away from oil, coal and nuclear. And nuclear energy is the one that presents the greatest challenge, because there are hidden costs with storage. Taxpayers will get stuck with the long-term costs. Ratepayers are being stuck with immediately increased electric rates. It’s not cheap. It doesn’t help our industries. And, you know, NBC and General Electric ought to have a conversation with itself about the best approach for energy for our nation.”

On the role of the other three candidates in excluding him from the debate: “Well, you know, I think there’s a real question about why Senators Clinton and Edwards didn’t say anything about the exclusion. Senator Obama did make a statement. And furthermore, if, as MSNBC maintained in court, this is a private matter, here you have Democratic presidential candidates participating in a, quote, “private debate” where the public interest could be ransacked, because General Electric is involved in all kinds of interests that are quite diverse from the public interest.

“So this then becomes a much larger question — much larger than, you know, my candidacy — about who’s structuring these debates? In whose interests are they being conducted? What about the questions, the way they’re framed? Why are they continuing to promote war? Why are these defense contractors involved, as in General Electric’s case? And GE owns Raytheon, GE owns NBC. Defense contracting goes up as war continues.”