McCain, Obama gear up for second debate
October 7, 2008
With the record-setting vp debate now history, it’s back to the top of the ticket on Tuesday night.
John McCain and Barack Obama square off in a town-hall-style debate moderated by NBC’s Tom Brokaw at Belmont University in Nashville. It’s the second of three debates between the candidates, with the last one scheduled for October 15 at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y.
Experts say that while Thursday’s Sarah Palin-Joe Biden vice presidential battle was interesting television, it will probably be long forgotten by the time the voters make their way to the polls.
“It’s back to the top two candidates,” CNN political analyst Gloria Borger said. “In the end, that’s who people are going to be voting for.”
The format of Tuesday’s debate will stand in stark contrast to the other three. Brokaw may be the moderator, but he won’t be asking any questions. Instead, he’ll be handing the microphone to a group of ordinary people — undecided voters all — who will ask questions that might not be what the mainstream media has been asking.
“It’s not the high drama of the YouTube debates. I don’t think we’ll see any snowmen asking questions (as in the 2004 YouTube debates sponsored with CNN),” said Dotty Lynch, a former CBS News analyst and a faculty member at American University in Washington. “But they are typically pretty interesting. Viewers at home can put themselves into the shoes of the questioners more than they can reporters.”
Each question gets a two-minute response from the candidates, followed by one minute of discussion. In the first presidential debate, moderator Jim Lehrer gave two minutes of responses each followed by five minutes of sometimes painfully awkward discussion.
It’s also one of the first times in a long time — perhaps since the retail politics of Iowa and New Hampshire 10 months ago — that the presidential candidates will have extended interaction with real people. McCain is known to be relaxed and comfortable with the town-hall style format. Obama, not so much, perhaps.
“The town hall debate is McCain’s best debate format,” said Paul Levinson, a professor at Fordham University in New York. “Obama . . . clearly is a much better speaker to a huge crowd or an interviewer (than he is at a debate).”
The town-hall format has its risks. In 1992, a reflexive action by then-President George H.W. Bush to look at his watch, caught by a camera, played into conventional wisdom that he was out of touch with average Americans.
“Non-verbal communication is king in the debate, even though a lot of people don’t realize that,” Levinson said. “It’s not so much what they say, it’s what they look like when they’re talking and, even more important, when their opponent is talking.”
It’s also about confidence, said Leonard Steinhorn, a public communications professor at American University.
“These are uncertain times and people are looking for somebody who is going to be the steady hand at the tiller. That’s how people will be looking,” Steinhorn said. “They don’t just listen to what they have to say, they’ll listen to how they say it. They look at the command, their mannerisms and their temperament.”
What there probably won’t be will be a lot of bitter back and forth between the candidates, experts say.
“Whatever anger that exists between the candidates, they are probably going to do their best to sublimate it and speak directly to the American people,” Steinhorn said. “I think it would be a huge mistake for one candidate to let it fly.”
Said CNN’s Borger: “Will they be negative directly to each other? Will they be combative? It’s going to be interesting to watch how they engage.”
It’s likely that ratings will be higher than the 52.4 million viewers who tuned in for the September 26 opening presidential debate that was held on a Friday night. But it’s also likely that it won’t come close to the 69.9 million who tuned in for Biden-Palin.
One TV executive well acquainted with ratings said he wasn’t going to make a prediction.
“You don’t know whether the tune-in was for Palin or because of increasing interest in the campaign. We don’t know enough,” CNN U.S. president Jonathan Klein said. “I have learned not to make any predictions about this campaign whatsoever.”
Paul J. Gough, Reuters
“Obama Youth — Junior Fraternity Regiment” video - what’s your take?
October 6, 2008
A Youtube video of middle school students at a Kansas City charter school is making the rounds on the internet. The video shows the students speaking of what Obama has inspired them to become in a stepping routine. The teacher who organized the video has been suspended. What’s your take on the video - is this being blown out of proportion or do you feel that their routine is inappropriate?
Indiana Republicans Making Voting Harder for Blacks
October 6, 2008
Zachary Roth, TPM Muckraker
- Indiana is one of the key red states that Barack Obama has unexpectedly put in play this year. So it’s not surprising that the GOP is pulling out all the stops to keep it in their column — including, predictably, launching an effort to make it much harder for African-Americans to vote.
In a nutshell, here’s what’s happened so far. The details get a little intricate, but stay with us here:
To win Indiana, Obama would likely need a big turnout from three low-income, heavily African-American cities, in the northern part of Lake County, near Chicago. Those three cities — Gary, Hammond, and East Chicago — together comprise more than 40 percent of the county’s population. But under Indiana law, early voting can take place only in the county clerk’s main office, which for Lake County is in Crown Point, more than an hour’s drive from those cities.
African-Americans may be at higher risk of stroke-causing brain lesions
October 6, 2008
Cerebral microbleeds, which are small bleeds within the brain, appear to be more common in African-Americans than in Caucasians, increasing the likelihood of having a stroke, according to a study published in the October 7, 2008, issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. These types of brain lesions can be an important indicator for stroke.
For the study, 87 people from the Washington, DC, area who had suffered a certain type of stroke, called an intracerebral hemorrhage, underwent brain scans. This kind of stroke involves bleeding in the brain and makes up 10 to 15 percent of all strokes. Researchers also determined the group’s risk factors for stroke such as age, hypertension and alcohol use. Forty-two of the people were African-American while 45 were Caucasian.
The study found that African-Americans had 32 percent more microbleeds than Caucasians. African-Americans were also more likely to have these types of lesions in several different areas of the brain. While African-Americans had more lesions in the lower and middle parts of the brain, Caucasians had them most frequently near the surface of the brain.
“Finding racial differences that could be linked with a higher prevalence for these brain lesions may lead to new methods for testing and treating people to prevent stroke,” said study author Chelsea Kidwell, MD, with Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, DC, and member of the American Academy of Neurology.
“Knowing if a person has a higher likelihood of having these brain lesions or bleeding in the brain is important for doctors and patients when caring for medically underserved groups of people and optimally treating their stroke risk factors,” said Kidwell. Hemorrhagic stroke is two to three times more common in minority populations, including African-Americans. Microbleeds are found in 50 to 80 percent of this type of stroke.
US Supreme Court rejects new trial for former Black Panther
October 6, 2008
The US Supreme Court Monday refused to hear arguments for a new trial for Mumia Abu-Jamal, a former Black Panther accused of killing a police officer who has become an icon for anti-capital punishment campaigners.
His lawyer Robert Bryan has already said he will seek to bring a second Supreme Court appeal — on the grounds of racism — for the 54-year-old former radio journalist accused of the 1981 murder of Daniel Faulkner.
Abu-Jamal’s death sentence was overturned in March by a federal court in Philadelphia, which found that the jury in the case had been incorrectly instructed. The judges voted two-to-one to uphold his conviction, however.
Having escaped death row, his lawyers are now fighting a life sentence and want to bring him back before a jury for a new trial.
They had asked the Supreme Court to approve a re-trial because of unreliable testimony from witnesses.
Bryan has said he will not rest until his client is freed. “Even though the federal court granted a new trial on the question of the death penalty, we want a complete reversal of the conviction,” he said in July.
As part of his defense, Abu-Jamal has argued he was denied a fair trial in 1982 because the prosecution barred 10 qualified African-Americans from sitting on the jury, which in the end consisted of 10 whites and two blacks.
The Philadelphia appeals court had rejected his arguments on lack of evidence of any racist intent on the part of the prosecution.
The US penal code bans the exclusion of potential jurists because of the colour of their skin.
Abu-Jamal’s campaign has attracted support from Nelson Mandela, Hollywood celebrities Danny Glover and Susan Sarandon and British parliamentarians, according to campaign group Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition.
Abu-Jamal was serving as the president of the Association of Black Journalists at the time of his arrest. He was a founding member of the Philadelphia Chapter of the Black Panther Party as a teenager.
The Black Panther Party was a Leftist African-American organization from the 1960s and 70s established to promote black power and self-defense.
AFP
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