“So let me get this straight. This is a long sentence;

We are going to be gifted with a health care plan that we are forced to purchase, and fined if we don’t, which reportedly covers 10 million more people without adding a single new doctor, but provides for 16,000 new IRS agents, written by a committee whose chairman doesn’t understand it, passed by Congress, that didn’t read it, but exempted themselves from it, and signed by a president who smokes, with funding administered by a treasury chief who didn’t pay his taxes, for which we will be taxed for four years before any benefits take effect, by a government which has bankrupted Social Security and Medicare, all to be overseen by a surgeon general who is obese and financed by a country that is broke.

So what the blank could possibly go wrong?

Votes for Gary Johnson will count as much as votes for every other candidate who loses (including Romney or Obama). If we are judging a meaningful vote to be a bet on who wins the horse-race, well only votes for one candidate will have meaning.

In the vast majority of states – those not “swing states” – it’s a foregone conclusion who will win. the state and its electors. Because of the electoral college, in states like New York and California, a vote for anyone but Obama – by your standards – is wasted.

I choose to think voting serves a different purpose than betting on the winner.

1. What are the terms of the (so-far) secret contract by which the debates are scripted?

2. Who exactly is sponsoring this infomercial for the Ds and Rs?

3. What comment to the participants have on decisions by YWCA and Philips Electronics to pull their sponsorship, finding that the Commission is not “non-partisan,” but apparently “Bi-partisan”?

Knowing something about all this would also be essential for viewers to put things in context.