What I find fascinating about the Presidential debates and major corporate media interviews with the candidates is not what they are asked, but what they are NOT asked or what is not subjected to national debate.  Also, given that there are 13 million children in poverty in this country, that there are 28,000,000 children estimated to be receiving food stamps (which, lest you think is a ‘free lunch’, works out to be only $1 per meal), and many millions of children without decent educations or affordable healthcare, you would think that the candidates might pick someone other than "Joe The Plumber" to use as the central illustration of who would be affected by either candidate’s domestic policies–by the way, it turns out that Joe isn’t who he says he is.

So here are the questions that I think should be asked of the candidates or of ourselves as we think about the important issues of the day:

1. How do you win a war on Terrorism? What does ‘winning’ mean, when anyone at any time can choose to use violence to accomplish political aims?

2. Why is it that the government has billions to spend on the Transportation Security Administration and on Homeland Security in general, but has nothing to spend on making sure that there are adequate voting booths and staffs to man polling stations for Presidential elections?  In 2004 and 2006 national elections, there were people who stood in line for as much as 12 hours in poorer districts in swing states.

3. Why is it that election day is not a national holiday, so that hourly or low-income workers can vote and not be penalized for taking time away from work? If Democracy is such an important aspect of our society, why penalize the poorest among us for taking time to exercise this most important of democratic principles?

4. Why are we imprisoning so many adults (approx. 50% of all inmates) for non-violent crimes? Why do we have the highest rate of incarceration of any Western industrialized nation and what less harmful, less expensive alternatives can we find for non-violent criminal offenders?

5. Why are we spending millions if not billions of dollars to build a fence around the U.S. to keep out illegal immigrants and then allowing golf courses or other friends-of-Bush to keep the fences off their land? Do we think that those entering the U.S. will stay off the golf courses that represent gaps in the fence because we put signs up asking them to?

6. What are we going to do to ensure we have a sufficient supply of drinking water?

7. Are we going to allow the continuing privatization of the water supply in the U.S.?  Now that water rights have been separated from property rights in the U.S., it is possible to buy up and privatize the water supply, which is now happening.

8. What are we going to do to address the threat of nuclear war, which is now greater than at any time in history?  There is a symbolic "Doomsday" clock that is used by scientists to measure the threat of human extinction, not just focused on nuclear war, but also on climate change and biosecurity. We are currently at 5 minutes to midnight, with midnight being the end of humanity.

9. Why don’t we value curing cancer, which kills hundreds of thousands of Americans every year  more than terrorism, which killed 3000 Americans one time in 2001?  Why do we care more about the WAY people die than the numbers who die?  Why do we outlaw the taking of paring knives on airplanes–which has not been known to kill a single human being on a flight–but not require breathalyzers built into cars so that people can’t drive drunk and kill thousands every year needlessly because they are DUI?  Why do we allow cigarettes to continue to be sold, when their use results in thousands of deaths and illnesses each year, the costs for which are borne by we the taxpayers quite often.

10. How do we solve the problem of massive functional illiteracy in our country, which now poses a national security threat?

11. How can we call the United States a Democracy when a majority of Americans want the U.S. to leave Iraq, and the President of the U.S. says (as he did on ‘60 Minutes’ when asked) "I know that a majority of Americans want us out of Iraq and I don’t care"?

12. What are we going to do about childhood morbid obesity? How can we limit the commercials for foods high in fat, sugar and salt, so that kids aren’t inundated with them? How do we stop the marketing and availability of highly unhealthy food to children?  Why don’t we have well-funded physical education classes in our public elementary schools anymore?